The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity. Carl Trueman. Sentinel Press, April 2026. $29, 256 pp.

-

Over a century ago, Max Weber characterized modernity as a period of disenchantment, inspired by Frederich Schiller’s poem, Die Götter Griechenlands, where lamentation is raised for the disappearance of supernatural creatures and the world of divine significance:

But lost and never to return again
Is all that I had known of these fair worlds,
No more can one this earthly bliss regain—
Gone is all which breathed life into these words.

The absence, even forceful eviction, of the weird and the divine, Weber’s Entzauberung, has haunted the pages of criticism of modern times ever since. In Weber’s hands, disenchantment was a way of capturing the rationalizing dispensation which loomed over modern society. The arenas of politics, philosophy, and science had sloughed off the past’s deposit of mysterious rites, folk tales, and strange beliefs, and replaced them with measurable, quantifiable systems. There was nothing else to uncover beneath dead matter. Divine nature, if it was real, was not present, and if present, not felt. Its many deputies, emissaries, and diminutive expressions -- influential planets, fairy, angelic and diabolic powers -- had gone out of sight, out of mind, out of belief.

Subscribe now

Drawing on Weber, Charles Taylor would later give students of modernity an array of tools for reflecting upon the nature and effects of disenchantment in our secular age. Reading him more than a decade ago, I found his distinction between the porous and buffered self especially illuminating, where the porous person believes there are powers in the world capable of entering in and influencing his life, while the buffered self imagines a barrier between himself and the exterior world, granting each individual a walled-off space for self-determination.

For all its explanatory power, disenchantment does not capture our modern crisis without remainder. Nor did figures like Charles Taylor or others imagine it was so. As a way to capture the malaise of a materialist world, the spiritual void left over when our tie with the transcendent was cut, disenchantment provides a needful part of a more complex account.

All the same, there are domains where disenchantment may be unfit for, perhaps even a distraction from, a far more pressing crisis than belief in the mysterious. We need more than one framework to diagnose the modern crisis. Is it enough to say that man has been disenchanted? Or is something else also at work?

This is where Carl Trueman, in his new book The Desecration of Man, proposes the adoption of a different framework. In the case of anthropology -- what it means to be human -- he calls for the use of more serious terms. The term Trueman points us toward is desecration.

As Trueman admits, “Desecration is a strong word, stronger than others that have been used to describe the modern world such as disenchantment.” He argues on two points that the word is nonetheless more fitting. First, it captures an essential quality of those things which have fallen victim to modernity’s nihilism and wanton disfigurement. He primarily focuses on how we have depreciated our human nature. Desecration better names what sacrality and holiness has suffered than disenchantment does. Humans are no longer seen as exceptional, unique creatures, placed higher than the animals and lower than the angels. Our persons and our bodies have been reduced to objects. How we choose to live our lives, how we choose to treat our selves, what counts as our final end have all turned into an array of options and preferences provided by technological research and legal license.

With an eye for these consequences, Trueman surveys such topics as sexual ethics, abortion, IVF, surrogacy, and man’s war against mortality. In every case, Trueman points out that if our souls and bodies are in fact sacred gifts given into our care by God, there are ways in which their treatment can only be described with the same language we would use for the act of burning down a church, violating the altar, or destroying a relic.

The analogy between body and building of course harkens back to Paul’s reminder to the church in Corinth, that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and we ought not to defile it with sin. With such a governing image, one can see more clearly how disenchantment’s demystification gives way to the violence of desecration. Disenchantment may have provided the conditions, but desecration best captures the results.

There is another aspect of modernity’s rejection of human nature which the idea of desecration captures more strikingly than disenchantment. Those who commit acts of desecration understand their behavior as a form of trespassing upon sacred ground. There is a rush and a thrill in the act of violating the sacred. While unintentional acts of desecration are certainly possible, Trueman notes, “the person who topples the gravestone or smashes the windows of a house of worship knows what they are doing: They are striking at the heart of what the religious community considers most sacred” (16). Trueman observes the common experience of the violators: desecration is exhilarating. “The sheer delight taken by many in toppling the moral codes of the past cannot be explained simply by the loss of an enchanted world. … There is a delight being taken in destruction” (21).

“Put provocatively, [what is happening to man] is not disenchantment. The death of God in modernity has led to the desecration of man. And many of us seem to find that exciting” (21).

The unsettling lens of desecration is what gives new force to the litany of biological and technological challenges which are otherwise familiar topics of concern. Addressing technological advancements, the ethical and legal battles, the surge of research and funding from institutions and governments, and our expanding powers of manipulation in areas of sexuality, fertility, and life-extension, Trueman’s analysis is rich in both research and reflection. Many cases are themselves the best warrant for desecration as the more fitting term. Certainly the awful threat of such trends as womb surrogacy, artificial wombs, or the eugenic potential in IVF companies such as Orchid strike the moral imagination no less than the violation of an altar in one’s local parish.

In one way, Trueman is arguing that we place at the center what has been on the periphery of our analyses. Scientific advancements, which one might have judged as a network of neutral methods employed at times for horrifying goals, are colored red from the moment the idea of such research enters into the minds of scientists. The outcome is not disbelief in the divine but the destruction of its embodiment. The excitement surrounding scientific and technological progress echoes the cries of revolutionaries. The vapor from heating vents atop an artificial-womb research lab blends with the smoke rising from a smoldering church.

Desecration requires nothing less than a wholistic response, and Trueman argues for three elements which must remain integrated with one another for Christians truly to survive and flourish in an age where the holiness of embodied souls is under threat. Christians must adopt orthodox belief, right worship, and proper practice, a trio he summarizes as creed, cult, and code. Adopting one or two and leaving the others will not do.

He points out the trend among some intellectuals to defend the cultural effects of Christianity or its aesthetic beauty – without submitting to the wholistic Christian way of life. Richard Dawkins’s praise for the cultural benefits of Christianity falls flat, for those effects are nourished by genuine, not selective, belief. “The problem is not solved,” writes Trueman, “by living as if Christianity were true” (187). Beliefs based on mere benefit, he argues, amount to a Christian nihilism. The beliefs are made subject to our will, to the condition that they be useful for us. The irony, as Trueman points out, is that Christianity can be misunderstood as merely useful because of the profound belief of those who came before us, who surrendered themselves to the faith and shared with their children and grandchildren the harvest of their simple submission. Belief must be placed into our hearts and minds, our imaginations and actions. Better perhaps to say, we must be taken into it.

“The truth of Christianity,” he writes, “must reshape our intuitions so that our moral limits, or obligations, and our ends dictate how we relate to our bodies, our loved ones, our neighbors, our communities, and the world around us, near and far” (187).

The quiet obedience to the creed, cult, and code of Christianity points us to our larger aim: we must reconsecrate the world. This comes in many forms, and Trueman gives a series of examples, all organized into instances of creed, cult, or code. We must train our beliefs by reading and understanding the Genesis story, through catechisms asking the believer what is the end of man; our worship should emphasize prayer, song, reciting and speaking with each other. Our rites must re-member us with our bodies. We must be a cult of nativity and funeral. Our buildings must be restored as venerable places, and in this way will we see more easily the respect owed to the temples of our bodies.

Last, Trueman turns to code, the way in which our beliefs and worship is carried into the wider world through moral habits. As Trueman sees it, this must begin through Christian hospitality and kindness. As he turns to offering a path forward, he writes, “The battle against desecration does not begin so much with boycotts of blasphemous arts as with acts of human kindness extended to neighbors” (207). A time of desecration is sure to be full of souls neglected and mistreated by systematic sacrilege: The elderly, for whom assisted suicide is offered at state expense. The sickly and malformed, for whom early scanning might have saved the soul from the pain of existence. The infants born from an artificial sack swirling with industrial fluids. Children whose parentage is either anonymous or mechanically fabricated. The mothers whose babies were handed over to others through a moneyed transaction. These, too, must be shown their humanity, and invited into places of comfort and holiness.

These strangers must be welcomed in. Trueman reflects on the passage in Deuteronomy where the Israelites are enjoined to welcome in the stranger, as they too were strangers once. The relevant part reads, “for the Lord, your God ... executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” Thus, Trueman argues, is desecration challenged: by the loving invitation into a consecrated space filled with a consecrating people: a friend to church, the lonely to a conversation, the lost to a home.

Trueman has paved for each of us a “little way” to walk in. Instead of chasing the elusive and perhaps undesirable qualities of enchantment, persons, families, churches, and communities are oriented toward a concrete vision of reconsecration, to love the human in a hostile world.

This, however, is not the end of the story. Trueman proposes the turn from enchantment toward consecration in the context of modernity’s abuse of human nature and the physical distortion of human bodies. This is a fitting place for its introduction, yet the language of consecration invites wider application. After all, surely desecration is not found solely in the treatment of our bodies, but can be found throughout society. What does it look like to reconsecrate an economy? What about a reconsecration in education? What does political reconsecration demand?

Seeing how many forms of desecration have invaded not only technological or scientific development but a richer tapestry of bonds and relationships between souls, such questions linger after reading Trueman’s account. They promise to bear fruit for Trueman and others who investigate them.

Trueman, however, expresses some hesitancy. Near the end, Trueman gestures toward some of the political consequences, by way of a warning against Christian nationalism. “Of course, the wannabe Christian warlords who talk tough online will dismiss this as pietism or ineffectual intellectual idealism. But that is only because they want power and they want it next week.” However true this may be -- it seems hard at times to pin down what Christian nationalism is, much like enchantment -- Trueman frames his caution in terms of acting too quickly in too short a period of time. He argues that the Christian nationalists are fantasists, since they imagine a recovery of Christendom in the short- or medium-term. “Christianity is too weak and too fragmented to be a significant ecclesiastical or political force in the world at large.” Reconsecration is a long-term vision, whereas many a political movement seems to overextend itself. The local church may have the resources to effect their neighborhood, county, or city in profound ways, but nothing at the scale of organizing a nation.

All the same, this caution against fantasies of imminent political change does not extend at least to intellectual reflection. If desecration is indeed definitive of our time, this seems all the warrant one needs to consider the effects of desecration on, say, politics, even while Christian traditions and communities lack the integrity and strength to effect change. Even if prudence discourages us against incorporating consecration into political action, it seems that consecration would provide a clear and deep source for consideration, especially in the sphere of politics. This can, and I think should, be explored alongside our daily practice of hospitality. We needn’t wait for, or indeed plan for, political influence before we see how consecration shapes our concepts of the political, the economic, or the technological. Hospitality already stands within a political philosophy, with implications for many areas of life.

There is another influence upon our notion of political consecration, however, which offers ample material for thought. The history of the Church, in Europe especially, is bound up with that of Christendom, a period in time when the institutions of palace, cathedral, and university were deeply shaped by Christian virtues, and vices. The period between the 9th and 14th centuries is an unsettling time to look into, full as they are with creeds, cults, and codes that disturb our modern predilections. In the Middle Ages, there were seasons of stability and cycles of warfare. Scandals and superstitions and saints abounded. People walked through the mud; Crusaders had blood on their hands, yet consecration was in the air. Not that consecration is peculiar to an era of fiefdoms and holy empires. Throughout its history, Christianity consecrated whatever and whomever it touched. What could we learn from past eras of Christian presence regarding what reconsecration looks like?

As Trueman pointed out, desecration is a strong word. He might also have called it a perilous word. Unlike disenchantment, it has the power, once deeply felt, to move people to action. His call for hospitality seems laudable, but the term implies more than an invitation to the stranger. Desecration is not only something, at least historically, that people have rescued others from, but have defended themselves and others against. This seems to be the challenge of the term which Trueman has chosen. It carries within it more than what Trueman attends to. I might agree that Christian response to desecration does not begin with boycotting art, but surely it includes it. Does it entail more than boycotts?

Desecration demands of us a great deal of wisdom to handle, but if Trueman is correct, handle it we must. He is to be thanked for taking the first step in turning our attention in its direction. As Christians and other believers ponder its significance, a rich and sober conversation awaits our minds and hearts and hands.

My family recently bought a Yoto for our son’s birthday. Some of our friends mentioned enjoying it for their kids, and it had come recommended elsewhere (including the Mere O Discord server). Yoto has a great library of short stories, songs, and audiobooks for listeners of all ages.

As part of its offering, Yoto also sells ‘Make Your Own’ cards. These cards can be loaded with up to 99 tracks of audio. That’s where I want to direct my attention in this piece–Christian families will be greatly helped by this little device for its simple and convenient opportunity to help conduct catechesis. (This post is not sponsored by Yoto nor am I receiving any commissions from them.)

Subscribe now

Why the Yoto?

Before I share my process, let me answer a preliminary question for those unfamiliar with the Yoto. Why bother with it? What’s the difference between it and, say, playing an audiobook or a podcast on Spotify with your phone?

From my experience and understanding, the Yoto is different and better because of how differently it presents to parents and kids. To parents, it’s obviously a digital technology–WiFi enabled, uses NFC cards, requires phones to connect, offers a subscription with streaming options, and is mostly controlled via mobile application. But for kids, it’s an analog experience. To my son, the Yoto is not Mom or Dad’s phone, he can only push three buttons on it, there’s no touch screen or moving pictures, he has to put a card in the slot for it to play music or stories, and he can carry it around (unlike Mom and Dad’s phones). The simplicity of the Yoto as a kind of alternative neo-analog device is exactly why we enjoy it so much.

Anyone raising kids in the Year of Our Lord 2026 is doing so in the shadow of harmful digital technology. As we try our best to raise our kids, it’s become increasingly clear that part of our task is to strive toward a generational weaning from our dependency on mobile devices. Any tool or feature we can take away from the iPhone is, for us, a win. With the Yoto, my wife and I reap the benefits of the convenience of digital technology (to upload custom playlists and adjust settings, for example) while our son reaps the benefits of it as an “analog” medium. And the medium, as they say, is the message.

Given that, here’s my recommendation: if you have young kids, get the Yoto. It’s better than an iPad because it requires attentive listening without an addictive screen. It’s intuitive, easy for kids to use, and can be set up in the background for kids to listen to. Kids can stream the Yoto Daily Podcast, play a music card, or listen to an audiobook–it’s great.

But for the Christian family, here’s the cherry on top: This is a prime opportunity to set a vision for discipleship in your home and to carry it out.

My Family’s Process

Buy a Yoto.

We started by purchasing a Yoto from a nearby Target. Each Yoto comes with a Make Your Own card and this Target happened to only have Laurie Berkner song cards on the shelf, so our son started without any story cards.

Set a vision for discipleship in your home.

Our family has adopted a vision for discipleship in our home, thanks to many people and resources, but especially folks writing about this today like Adam Griffin, Danielle Hitchen, and Justin Whitmel Earley, among others.

This vision is especially situated around a rhythm of three things: (1) the reading of Scripture; (2) traditional Christian catechesis through the Apostle’s Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer; and (3) keeping time with the church calendar. We also make a serious effort to read good literature to and with our kids, to include classics like Aesop’s Fables and Mother Goose, and relatively newer works like Curious George, Little Blue Truck, and whatever the library may have available on a given day.

Buy books, borrow books, get creative, collect songs & stories.

The next step in our process was to gather stories and songs that we aspire to be the heart and soul of our home’s collective imagination. This is essential because it makes my wife and I the active curators for our children, instead of the passive consumer of whatever Walmart’s marketing team or Meta’s algorithm pushes. What I mean by that is, if we aren’t making an effort to pursue our vision for discipleship, especially through stories, it will be far too easy for us to simply receive what Amazon or Walmart or The Algorithm is pushing at any given time.

In other words, we began to build a family library that is at the service of our family’s vision for discipleship. We save websites, resources, links, videos, and conference materials. We occasionally print off what we can, and put it in a place we know we will remember it. We have been blessed in that our oldest was the firstborn grandchild for both my side and my wife’s side of the family, so we have plenty of books. Our aim has been to cultivate interest, active listening, and patient attention so that we can nourish our kids’ wonder and imagination. All of that comes with reading, telling stories, and singing together.

As an example, we are now the proud owners of three entries in Lexham Press’s For All God’s Children Series. These books serve as concise and easy-to-follow teachings on the Apostle’s Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer.

Read and sing to kids.

Naturally, after setting a vision and accumulating stories, we read and sing them to our children. On Sundays, we make a special effort to read the For All God’s Children series and to memorize these foundational parts of the Christian faith. As I’ve read to my kids, I’ve gotten more comfortable reading at different paces and tones that suit the book being read. It’s been especially helpful to find the places where I can pause and look over to my son and expect him to “fill in the blank.”

Try recording some things by yourself.

Here’s where we get into the actions that actually involve the Yoto. After nurturing some familiarity with the books we love, I have started to record myself reading them so they can be added to the Make Your Own cards. Oftentimes, I’ll also read a chapter of Scripture verbatim where I may not always do so when we tell the story.

For example, our son loves David and Goliath (classic!), but we will typically read a condensed version of it together. For the Yoto, I recorded myself sharing a little preface about how David was anointed king just before this and so was a “secret shepherd king” that came to fight the giant, followed by a verbatim reading of 1 Samuel 17. To close the reading, I say, “This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.” We could purchase one of the many Bible cards available in Yoto’s library, and we probably will, but these little details and repetitions are things we want to teach and put on display in our home. So we do it ourselves.

To record, I open the Yoto mobile application, go to the Create tab, and tap Record. When I’m finished, I can go to My recordings to change the title or listen back to each track. So far, I have kept eighteen recordings. I’ll talk about how to create a playlist and upload it to a Make Your Own card below.

Record yourself reading/singing to your kids.

Another thing I have begun to do is record myself reading while I am with my son. We’ve done this with all the For All God’s Children books, which is a lot of fun because Yoto offers a Page turn chime button that my son is always delighted to push. It’s also great fun to hear him “fill in the blank” when we’ve read together and point out the hidden cat on each page. When he listens to these recordings, he can do so with the book in his lap to follow along, or he can listen without it. The other stories I’ve recorded have been what you might call “of the oral tradition”--some that I’ve made up. These are fun to tell and listen back to because they’re spontaneous and totally unserious. In one recording, my wife accidentally interrupts by asking if I can take the trash out. In another, my son forgets I’m telling a story and asks if he needs to get in his jammies. We hear these little bloopers every time we replay the Make Your Own card, but my son still happily declares “it’s the giant gilded saber-claw crab!” at just the right time.

Create a Yoto playlist, add tracks, and upload to the Yoto player.

To record a playlist, here’s what I do. Go to the Create tab and tap Record if you haven’t recorded anything.

After you have at least one recording, go to the Library tab and tap Make a playlist. After adding a name and a description, you have the option to add recordings from your library, add audio files recorded elsewhere, or add a radio stream.

I’ve only ever recorded in the app and added tracks the first way. After you’ve selected the tracks you want to add, tap Create playlist.

By the way, it’s worth noting that you can add up to 100 tracks to a playlist. I haven’t pushed this to the limit, but one of my tracks is eighteen minutes long and there’s been no indication that tracks are limited by time. When you have a playlist, you can open it up and tap the Link to card button.

I’ve only used the NFC option, which you can do by tapping Use your phone.

All you have to do then is set your card down and tap it with your phone. When you have your playlist downloaded to your card, you can have the Yoto player download it by leaving the card in the player without any audio playing. I’ve found this process to be really easy, and there are many how-to articles to walk you through anything you may prefer to do differently than I have.

What’s on our Make Your Own card?

1. An intro where I say hi to our son, tell him what’s on the card, and tell him I love him

2. Jack & the beanstalk

3. The hare and the tortoise (Aesop’s Fables)

4. Fighting roosters and the eagle (Aesop’s Fables)

5. Psalm 23 (Theopolis version, sung)

6. David & Goliath (1 Samuel 17, read verbatim)

7. Ten Commandments and All God’s Children

8. The Ten Commandments

9. Apostle’s Creed for All God’s Children

10. The Apostle’s Creed

11. The Lord’s Prayer for All God’s Children

12. The Lord’s Prayer

13. The boy and the red shell (a story I made up and tell to my son)

We let our son listen to the Yoto mostly at his leisure during the day. We also let him play the Make Your Own card during his nap and at bedtime because we adjusted the Yoto to turn off after it finishes all the tracks on a card.

The repetition of the Apostle’s Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and Psalm 23 have been instrumental in our work to collectively memorize the articles of our faith and the songs of the Church. Hearing our toddler “fill in the blanks” as we recite the Creed or sing a psalm together has paid for the Yoto one hundred times over.

It’s a joy and a privilege to stumble through the journey of raising kids, especially as we find what works and what helps. The Yoto has proved itself as a reinforcing tool for catechesis in our home. Making our own recordings forces us to recite the things we are teaching our children. Having a card with his parents’ voices helps our son to know that what he’s hearing is particular to the life of our home.

My wife relayed a story to me that our son picked up a book at home and started “reading her the Bible” and just combined the story of David & Goliath and the Apostle’s Creed. “Giant of Gath! ..and ..and ascended into heaven…” Praise God for the gifts of repetition, imagination, and, yes even devices like the Yoto.

Isaac DeValois

Isaac DeValois is a noncommissioned officer in the Air National Guard and a nontraditional student who writes to understand a life well-lived. Between his active duty and National Guard service he has taken classes through Liberty University, Iowa State University, and Davenant Hall. Isaac lives with his wife and kids in Iowa. He writes occasionally on Substack.

When Pope Leo XIV was elected in 2025, he made clear that a chief focus of his pontificate would be the rise of artificial intelligence. My ears immediately perked up, for the topic is uniquely relevant to me. I am a writer, one of the professions often thought to be most at risk from large language models. My husband, on the other hand, is an electrical engineer who currently works with LLMs for a living.

Oh, the conversations we have had in our home! There have been points of strong disagreement where we looked at each other oddly and wondered how the other could possibly hold such erroneous underlying assumptions. There have also been points of compromise and even, dare I say it, agreement.

When it was announced that the pope’s new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, would be dealing heavily with the issue at the center of our household discussions, we were both highly interested. This was notable, for our choices of reading material tend to differ significantly. But now I was eager to read something about AI and my husband was at least willing to read a summary of something theological. As it turned out, he watched the pope’s speech and read through multiple summaries long before I could wade through all 42,300 words of the text.

Subscribe now

“At least he didn’t ask ChatGPT to summarize it for him,” I reasoned, but the frustration of doing things the old fashioned way—with a printed copy that I marked up with pens in between shuttling my son to his various activities, preparing dinner, and all manner of other household tasks—was acute. Within a few hours of the encyclical’s release, the internet had read and digested it. Quotes were popping up all over social media. Long-form analyses had been posted to YouTube. Still stuck on page twenty, I had a serious case of F.O.M.O., but I told myself it was alright: sometimes family responsibilities are more important and slow ways are better. Yes, I told myself that, but it was hard to believe. When I finally read the whole encyclical, I reflected upon its contents and saw reason for both concern and hope.

The opening paragraph of Magnifica Humanitas reveals the themes that will dominate the encyclical. “Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together,” the pope writes, setting up a contrast between the biblical examples of Babel and Jerusalem. Whereas Babel “reveals the limits of any effort that, however grandiose, arises from self-affirmation, sacrifices human dignity for efficiency and aspires to reach heaven without God’s blessing,” in Nehemiah’s Jerusalem we find “a common language—not one of uniformity, but one of communion, namely the harmony that arises when all persons assume their own role and recognize that their strength comes from the Lord.”

Having established this dichotomy, the pope continues, “Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible.” His choice of the terms dignity, justice, and fraternity reveal the three foundational principles which he will seek to uphold:

1. human dignity derived from the imago Dei and in need of preservation through humanization,

2. a renewed evaluation of the demands of justice in light of the new things of history,

3. the common good as chiefly seen when we encounter one another in community.

The purpose of Magnifica Humanitas is neither to fully condone nor fully condemn artificial intelligence, robotics, and other developing technologies. For,

the primary choice is not between a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem; between a power that claims to dominate the heavens and a people who work together in the presence of God to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence.

Dignity and Humanness

The term dignity occurs often in modern parlance, but its meaning can shift with circumstances. Nowhere is it more prevalent than in the debate over medically assisted suicide, another matter that strikes at the purpose of human life. The Catholic Church has previously spoken to that issue, and now Pope Leo XIV invites us to consider how we uphold the same principles in light of new things. “In the era of artificial intelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human.” This was my own conclusion recently upon re-reading T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men”: that I will be human if it is the last thing I do. This is a great rallying cry for our time.

The pope identifies four understandings of the word dignity. Moral dignity is “the way in which a person directs his or her choices and actions.” This is what we mean when we say someone acts in a dignified manner. Social dignity indicates “a person’s living conditions and the concrete respect received from society.” This is part of what is meant when people speak of dying with dignity. Existential dignity is “the way in which a person perceives his or her own worth and the value of life” and is therefore a matter of subjective self-analysis. Ontological dignity, on the other hand, is “the dignity that belongs to every human being simply by virtue of existing, of having been willed, created and loved by God.” It is therefore supremely objective.

This distinction is important, as when he uses the word dignity throughout the encyclical, the pope is referring to ontological dignity: the significance that a human being has as the result of bearing the imago Dei. It is an inextricable part of human nature such that to speak of “dehumanization” is to speak of the denial of the imago Dei and an offense against humanity’s Creator. The pope writes that the gospel “provides the criteria for recognizing what humanizes or dehumanizes and what liberates or oppresses in ever-changing situations,” precisely because it is in God’s Word and his actions in history that the true dignity and telos of humanity is revealed. (Some may object to the way he uses the term gospel here, but the general point holds.)

Pope Leo sees many ways in which emerging technologies are dehumanizing us, from algorithms viewing individuals as a data set rather than a person, to our relentless efforts to remove any limitations upon our nature, to the quest for endless knowledge without growth in wisdom. But of chief concern to the pope is the ideology “that suggests that every person must earn or justify his or her own worth, to the point of attributing greater value to those who are more efficient or effective.” According to this perspective, human beings are “reduced to a means of achieving results, a resource to be used and exploited, and are no longer recognized as a proper end in themselves who should never be instrumentalized.”

It is the Church’s job to remind the world “that true fulfilment is not achieved by eliminating weakness but through harmonious growth,” as opposed to the technocratic or post-humanist mentality which asserts that the human person is “an object to be manipulated or a resource to be optimized, removing all safeguards against the unchecked pursuit of profit.”

Here the chief fear of many regarding artificial intelligence—that it will put them out of a job—is not merely an economic concern but one of human nature itself, for “work is not simply an instrument; it expresses and enhances the dignity of our lives. It is a requirement of the human condition, a normal path toward maturity, development and personal fulfilment.”

Given these potential threats to human dignity, the pope uses what has proved to be a headline friendly turn of phrase, stating that artificial intelligence must be “disarmed.” But many who see that word out of context will not understand his intent, for he clarifies, “To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity. It means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussions and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life.”

This is one of many occasions on which the pope’s themes overlap and converge, for disarming artificial intelligence is not just a matter of preventing dehumanization and upholding dignity. As his clarifying comments show with their emphasis on open access and pluralized control, disarming artificial intelligence is equally a matter of justice.

Justice

When Robert Prevost was selected as the latest bishop of Rome, there was considerable speculation over whether he would be as “woke” as Pope Francis. As it turns out, Pope Leo XIV holds to a similar understanding of justice as Francis, but one that is equally similar to the tradition of every pope going back to his namesake Leo XIII. Simply to proclaim the traditional social doctrine of the Catholic Church is, for some, a step into wokeness. But in Magnifica Humanitas, the present pope argues that the Church’s understanding of justice is as old as Scripture itself.

“Technology has the power to heal, connect, educate, and protect our common home; but it can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice,” he warns, appealing to the Church’s understanding of the ultimate destination of goods to argue for equal access to the benefits of artificial intelligence. So far, so basic. But he goes on to use a term often shunned in conservative theological circles: social justice.

“The idea of ‘social justice’ helps us recognize that injustices do not arise solely from the wrong choices of individuals, but also from structures, mechanisms and economic and cultural systems that produce inequality almost automatically,” the pope writes. Anticipating potential objections to the language of systems, he further insists, “To think that new technologies will automatically benefit everyone is to ignore the evidence. Unless transformations at the design stage prioritize the prevention of new and further disparities, technological progress will inevitably produce structural inequalities.” Perhaps we can put him down as a skeptic about trickle-down economics.

The pope would have us look to the example of our Lord to find the rationale for pursuing social justice. “For the Christian community, social justice is a concrete way of following Jesus and remaining faithful to the Gospel,” he says, adding that Christ “teaches us that justice is born from, and fulfilled in, fraternity, because the way we approach and relate to the least among us becomes, in concrete terms, the measure of our relationship with God and with our brothers and sisters.”

This discussion about the just use of technology makes me think of President Trump’s second inauguration in the Capitol rotunda, which was perhaps most memorable for the lineup of tech titans standing behind him. There in a row stood Elon Musk (owner of X and founder of Tesla and Space X), Sundar Pichai (CEO of Google), Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon and founder and owner of Blue Origin), and Mark Zuckerberg (founder and owner of Facebook/Meta). Tim Cook (CEO of Apple) stood further away. I could not help wondering if the man being sworn in as president would have as much power over American lives as the men standing behind him.

The pope evidently shares my thoughts and views the situation as one of potentially great injustice. “When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities.” Perhaps worse still are decisions made not by humans at all, but algorithms. Choices involving “employment, credit, access to public services or even a person’s reputation” are now handled by “automated systems that do not know ‘compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and above all, the hope that people are able to change,’ and can therefore give rise to new forms of exclusion.”

In one of the passages that has drawn significant attention on social media, the pope expresses concern about the way justice is currently perceived in relation to warfare. “Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the ‘just war’ theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated.”

The phrase “Pope Leo calls Just War Theory outdated!” has been making the rounds, but it is misleading. For the pope is not arguing here for more warfare, but less. “Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy, and forgiveness. The use of force, violence, and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.” This is an acknowledgment that the realities of modern warfare could not have been anticipated by St. Augustine of Hippo, and therefore we need to find ways of extending the same principles to new things.

When tech companies consider only their profit margin while deciding who to hire and fire or when countries pour public money into expensive weapons systems rather than social welfare programs, it amounts to a grave injustice. But fears of losing out on the battlefield or in the marketplace are leading to the rapid expansion of many AI programs without taking time to properly evaluate safeguards.

This is what the pope calls a “globalized technocratic paradigm,” and it is used to justify all manner of injustices. But injustice could also occur if we fail to make appropriate use of technology to reduce human suffering. He tells us that “the true alternative is not between enthusiasm and fear, but between two paths of development: a progress that serves individuals and peoples, or a progress that subjects them to the mentality of power.”

It is this relationship between the individual and the communal that constitutes the pope’s final major theme.

Community and the Common Good

Pope Leo writes in his encyclical that “when the economy turns against the person or science oversteps the limits of its competence, the Church—together with other Christian denominations and believers of other religions—must make her voice heard, not in order to dominate, but to promote communion.” This word communion holds an important place both in Scripture and in the mind of the pope. He urges us to be “builders of communion, rather than architects of Babel. We are to be servants of the coming Kingdom, instead of lords of towers destined for ruin.”

Communion is linked to two of the key principles of Catholic social doctrine: subsidiarity and solidarity. According to the pope, subsidiarity means that “whatever can be carried out by individuals, families, intermediary organizations and local communities should not be carried out by higher-level authorities,” whereas solidarity is “the concrete recognition that the future of each individual is connected to the future of all.”

Here we see a two-part recognition of the role of community and the fact that humans are communal beings. Government has its place in providing social care, but this does not remove the primary duty of the local community, e.g. family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and co-religionists. Neither should any person think themselves totally independent, without duties to their neighbors or reliance upon the products of their neighbors’ labor.

“The digital culture multiplies connections and offers new opportunities for interaction; yet, the human heart retains an irrevocable need for genuine closeness,” the pope stresses, speaking perhaps to what is often termed the loneliness epidemic. He argues that “what saves humanity is not enhanced self-sufficiency, but a relationship that liberates, a communion that transforms.” This is true not only in terms of human relations, but also to our ultimate redemption through the Son of God who came to dwell with us. In the light of the Incarnation, we see the true telos of humanity as communion with our neighbors and with God himself.

Large language models, on the other hand, “do not build genuine relationships, but only their appearance.” This is not to say that they have no positive role to play, but the telos of artificial intelligence must be the betterment of humanity, not its domination. We must not lose sight of what makes humans human. “We can embrace the technological progress that alleviates suffering and unlocks new possibilities, provided we do not abandon the very essence of our humanity, namely the capacity for relationship and love.”

The rise of globalization in the past century means that “the common good is taking on an increasingly universal dimension, with rights and duties concerning the entire human family.” We must therefore avoid insular thinking that shrinks community down to those who are exactly like us, expanding our notion of community to include all who are made in God’s image. “This is the guiding principle for technological processes: it is not enough for artificial intelligence to make us more efficient or connected; it must also serve to build a universal human family, with shared rights and duties, where digital proximity becomes a real opportunity for encounter and mutual care.”

This leads into the pope’s consideration of our present geopolitical moment, in which great powers are increasingly abandoning diplomacy in favor of military action. The pope laments that “rather than automatically generating unity and peace, globalization has provoked fundamentalist, identity-based and nationalistic reactions.” This results in a world where international relations are characterized by distrust.

Multilateralism has led not to greater balance and harmony, but a more fractured communion. He urges us to welcome the possibility of encounter with those unlike ourselves: to hear them and know them as precious creations of God. “For if we experience authentic encounters with others, with those who are different, strangers and migrants, it becomes much more difficult even to imagine war.”

These days, it is far easier to imagine a world with unending war than one where it never begins. Building what the pope envisions will therefore require something else: genuine hope.

Hope

In the traditional Christian understanding, hope is one of the three theological virtues, relying on its sister virtues of faith and love. It also supports and draws from the cardinal virtues of justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude. Disconnected from these other virtues, hope becomes unworthy of the name, but when they are all brought together, it is strengthened into something that can bear the weight of our anxieties. The pope assures us, “In fact, peace is neither a naïve hope nor merely the absence of war; instead, it is always possible as the fruit of justice and charity.”

The hope of a Christian is based on the Incarnation of Christ, in which he redeemed us and through which he will bring us to life everlasting. The pope writes, “We view history in the light of the crucified and risen Lord, to whom the Father has given ‘all authority in heaven and on earth’ (Mt 28:18). We do not consider the present as a predetermined fate, but an opportunity for personal and collective conversion.” The power of Christ’s kingdom is like a mustard seed that grows to become a great tree. “While the tumult of confusion is all around us, goodness grows silently from the earth.”

This means that it is not up to us to save the whole world by ourselves. “The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization.” In our limited areas of personal influence, “we must choose whether to fuel the mentality of force (even if only through indifference, cynicism, lies or hatred), or to preserve the mindset of peace (with truth, moderation, closeness and care).”

As a believer in the doctrine of total depravity and a long observer of the evils of this world, it is easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking that things will always get worse, people will always choose evil over good, and we will not have peace before Christ’s return. But the pope rightly reminds us that, “History does not appear solely as a record of human violence, but also as evidence that humanity is capable of creating institutions that protect our shared life.” I must remember this, or I will be tempted to deny the goodness of God and the possibility of redemption for myself and my fellow humans.

In one of the most beautiful passages in Magnifica Humanitas, the pope touches upon our resurrection hope in a rapidly changing world.

No computational system, however sophisticated, can create a heart that gives itself, or a conscience that discerns good from evil. Even when machines excel in efficiency, a human face that asks to be gazed upon remains the center of our history. This human face is the fullness toward which history is moving. It is the mystery of ‘recapitulation’: the certainty that the Father has decreed to bring all things, those in heaven and those on earth, back to Christ, the one Head (cf. Eph 1:10) In this plan, nothing will be lost that is authentically human. Indeed, everything will be purified and reunited in the One, who gathers every fragment of life, every tear and every authentically human achievement, rescuing them from nothingness and delivering them, redeemed, to the Father.

The call for Christians is therefore to be like Nehemiah and his fellow countrymen rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. We must not be “passive spectators of social and cultural fractures, nor mere commentators on what is crumbling.” Rather, we must “enter the construction sites of history—research laboratories, technology companies, schools, the media, institutions and local communities—in order to rebuild what has collapsed and protect what is threatened.” Because Christ has already triumphed and we know he will one day restore all things, we can do this with confidence, not fearing the changing times.

Encounter

In emphasizing the need for genuine human encounter, Magnifica Humanitas echoes something else I have recently been reading: the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the chief theologians of Christian community. In works such as Life Together, Bonhoeffer stressed the importance of genuine encounter between human beings and with God himself. Without such an encounter, he argued, community cannot exist.

Therefore, when I finished reading the encyclical, it was time for an encounter: a real moment of human connection. I found it in discussing the work with my husband. I thought perhaps he would accuse the pope of overstatement in his warnings about artificial intelligence. But no, my husband agreed with the pope’s assessments, especially a paragraph that highlighted the way workers can be locked into an endless cycle of repetitive tasks, unable to keep pace with the development of AI, feeling their dignity has been eroded.

My husband confessed that much of the stress he experiences at work is because he is expected to know all there is to know about AI, but it is literally changing every day. This, he explains, is why he spends hours at night watching YouTube videos, attempting to understand the latest twists and turns of the machine. This is what raises his blood pressure when he questions what his company’s future, or indeed his own future, will be like. For just a moment, I saw the immense stress he was under as I had not before, even as I recognized his continued passion for the subject.

I also could not help but think that in choosing the path of slow contemplation rather than rapid summary, I had honored the very intent of the pope’s encyclical. For I uphold the dignity and humanity of my disabled son when I put my work aside to care for him. I act justly when I divide my time equitably between my vocations in proportion with God’s calling. I cultivate community when I take time to talk to a friend or simply keep our house running. And when I get out of bed in the morning to serve another day, I declare my hope in the restoration of all things.

That is the challenge and the hope of Magnifica Humanitas. It is a message we would all do well to heed. Times change and technology changes, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

To begin, we need to cover two key topics: the words, behavior, and associations of Zachary Garris and the teaching record of the Presbyterian Church in America on issues of racial sin. After that, I want to move toward a broader point regarding the stewardship of our institutions, including our denominations.

Subscribe now

The Words, Behavior, and Associations of Zachary Garris

Rev. Zachary Garris is a teaching elder (TE) in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Rev. Garris pastors at Bryce Avenue Presbyterian Church in White Rock, New Mexico, which is part of the Rio Grande presbytery. (Presbyteries are bodies of regional governance in presbyterian congregations, roughly equivalent to a diocese in churches that use an episcopal polity rather than presbyterian.)

In addition to his work at the church, Rev. Garris is a regular conference speaker, author, and runs a publishing imprint called Reformation Zion. In the past, Garris has authored a book with the independent scholar and ethnonationalist Stephen Wolfe and initially accepted an offer to speak at a conference alongside the anti-semitic white nationalist pastor Joel Webbon, which he later withdrew from after a number of pastors in the PCA strongly encouraged him to do so. The launch video for the event, however, is still visible on YouTube and includes Garris’s photo alongside the other speakers. One of the promotional graphics for the conference, created when Garris was still scheduled to speak and featuring his photo, is used as the feature image of this essay.

In his work as a publisher, Rev. Garris has published Assailing the Gates of Hell, a book by the South African Calvinist author Adi Schlebusch. Schlebusch is a self-described kinist. Schlebusch himself works at the Pactum Institute, a South African think tank that has in the past published a series of essays by defrocked presbyterian pastor Michael Spangler on what Spangler calls “race realism.” Spangler has also posted many times on social media regarding the supremacy of the white race and has said that the Nazi treatment of the Jews was not a failure in Christian love:

Spangler also argues that, “This is the secret reason violent crime rates are so high in America, and especially in the South: it’s not our guns, it’s our blacks.” Wolfe has made similar claims in his own work, arguing that “blacks in America, considered as a group, are reliable sources for criminality, and their criminality increases when constraints diminish.” Both Spangler and Wolfe have also claimed that interracial marriage is (or can be) sinful:

Garris’s own writing also aligns with the general viewpoint of his friends and associates. For example, in 2019 Garris wrote an essay on the southern presbyterian theologian R. L. Dabney, whose own views on race were quite clear. Writing in reply to a critic of his original piece on Dabney, Garris said,

There are two issues raised in Mr. Whealton’s response. The first is whether biblical hierarchy extends to racial hierarchy. The Bible does not specifically address this. Though the Bible affirms that all humans are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27) and that Jesus redeems people from every nation (Revelation 5:9), there is nothing in Scripture that teaches that all men are created equal.

While Garris does not explicitly say here that the white race is superior, he does possibly accept the reality of “racial hierarchy” and then goes on to note that the Bible never explicitly teaches that all men are created equal. The conclusion one would be expected to draw from the above is fairly obvious, I think, even if Garris does not explicitly spell it out.

Additionally, Garris has been published by New Christendom Press, which is operated out of Refuge Church in Ogden, UT, a non-denominational congregation which is pastored by Brian Sauve and by Eric Conn. New Christendom Press has also published the work of the anti-semitic author Andrew Isker. Sauve and Conn have both in the past boosted social media posts made by the white nationalist Ethan Holden, and appeared in a video produced by Holden which spliced footage of Sauve, Conn, and Wolfe into a video alongside a variety of white nationalist and Nazi figures and designs. The video was sufficiently explicit and extreme that even Moscow, ID pastor Douglas Wilson, who has himself in the past defended southern slavery, expressed concern about it.

Finally, Garris contributed a book foreword to a recent volume published by Sacra Press. Sacra Press is notable because it is run by Cody Justice, who cohosts a podcast with the aforementioned Michael Spangler. Sacra Press has also published volumes from Schlebusch and Spangler (an adaptation of his essays on race realism for Schlebusch’s Pactum Institute). Most notably, Sacra Press has published a volume by an early 20th century German Lutheran called Positive Christianity which sought to reconcile Christianity and Nazism. This is a publisher Garris is plainly willing to be associated with.

Later this year Garris will be speaking at the New Christendom Press conference alongside Conn, Sauve, and Wolfe. Additionally, Garris has in the past defended chattel slavery on social media.

He has also liked social media posts claiming that racism is not a sin:

This, then, is an overview of Garris’s speech, behaviors, and associations as they relate to questions of racism, kinism, and Nazism. It is not in any way ambiguous. His record is quite clear. Garris has a direct commercial relationship to a self-described kinist in Schlebusch. Garris has co-authored work with an ethnonationalist in Wolfe. And we see that Garris’s own commercial associates, Schlebusch and Justice, are closely tied to a self-described white supremacist and defrocked minister.

In his publishing, writing, speaking, and public associates Garris is deeply intertwined both financially and through professional connections with a network of public and avowed ethnonationalists, white supremacists, and kinist thinkers. These ties go back a number of years. To whatever degree an interrelated network or project of far right Christian kinism exists, Garris is an active associate of this movement.

The PCA’s Handling of Racism

The Presbyterian Church in America is a denomination of roughly 2,000 congregations and 400,000 members. The PCA has on at least four separate occasions taken some kind of formal action to address the sin of racism.

In 2004, the denomination’s General Assembly, the highest authority in the church, formally adopted a pastoral letter addressing racial sins and the denomination’s own history with racism.

In 2016, General Assembly passed an overture which amongst other things said that the PCA resolved to,

recognize, confess, condemn and repent of corporate and historical sins, including those committed during the Civil Rights era, and continuing racial sins of ourselves and our fathers such as the segregation of worshipers by race; the exclusion of persons from Church membership on the basis of race; the exclusion of churches, or elders, from membership in the Presbyteries on the basis of race; the teaching that the Bible sanctions racial segregation and discourages inter-racial marriage; the participation in and defense of white supremacist organizations; and the failure to live out the gospel imperative that “love does no wrong to a neighbor.”

In 2018, General Assembly received a report on the sin of racism drafted by an ad interim committee of the church.

Finally, in 2025 General Assembly affirmed,

That the 52nd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America does hereby join with the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (221st General Synod) and with the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America (193rd Synod) in condemning without distinction any theological or political teaching which posits a superiority of race or ethnic identity born of immutable human characteristics, and does call to repentance any who would promote or associate themselves with such teaching, either by commission or omission.

It also should be noted that there is a theological reason the PCA has staked out these positions. The PCA is a confessional denomination, which means that ordained leaders in the PCA take vows to uphold a certain confessional standard. In the case of the PCA, that standard is the Westminster Confession of Faith as well as the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms.

One of the strengths of the PCA’s confessional standards is the expansive way they treat the Ten Commandments, which is fully in keeping with the way the Reformed tradition has always understood them. Following the example of Our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount, who argued that hating our brother is a form of murder (and therefore a violation of the sixth commandment), the PCA’s confessional standards adopt broad readings of each of the Ten Commandments—which you can read for yourself in the Larger Catechism particularly.

So when addressing issues of racism, the PCA has often linked sins of racism to specific violations of the Ten Commandments. In the 2004 Letter, for example, it argues that the sin of racism is a violation of the first, sixth, and ninth commandments in as much as racism involves having other gods before God, leads to hatred of other racial groups, and requires lying about the status and capacities of other racial groups. So the argument the PCA has made on this issue is not simply driven by 21st century egalitarian politics; it is rooted quite explicitly in our confessional standards.

Given all of this, it seems almost self-evident that Rev. Garris is in violation of the teachings of his denomination on the issue of racism.

Even if you only considered his associations with Schlebusch, Wolfe, Isker, Webbon, and Spangler and set that next to the 2025 General Assembly’s call to repent of “any who would promote or associate themselves” with racist teaching, Garris is in violation. He has, since the church adopted that statement last summer, co-authored a book with a man who, as noted above, says that Black people are a reliable source of criminality in the USA and who has suggested that inter-racial marriage is sinful—a position explicitly condemned by the PCA’s own past statements on the issue. That alone seems like a quite brazen and obvious act of defiance directed at last year’s General Assembly.

If you take the broader scope of Garris’s work and the broader scope of what the PCA has said about race, the problems become even more apparent and undeniable.

That, of course, is why it was no surprise that Garris was brought up on charges over precisely this issue. Unfortunately, that is the last part of the story that makes sense. Because after charges were filed, the process seems to have fallen apart. Since Rio Grande Presbytery has not issued any statement at time of publication, we cannot definitively say why the process failed. But that it has seems difficult to deny.

To begin, it took roughly two years from the time Garris was first accused at the presbytery level to when the trial was completed. Regardless of what one thinks of the merits of the case against him, it is highly irregular to initiate a process that could lead to the revocation of a pastor’s ordination credentials (and thus the loss of employment) and then leave that pastor (and his family and his church) dangling for two years. It may be the case, of course, that Garris himself contributed to the slow process—he has several cases already pending with the PCA’s Standing Judicial Committee, so that may have contributed to the delay or Garris may simply have dragged his feet at certain points. We cannot say for sure unless the presbytery releases information regarding the process, which they have not done so far.

Then last week, when the trial finally took place, the rulings were even stranger. The presbytery exonerated him of the charge related to racism, which suggests that they either failed to do their due diligence, which is a failure of process, or that the prosecutor did not present all the relevant evidence, which is also a failure of process.

Additionally, the presbytery found him guilty of intemperate speech, citing two tweets he sent to Dr. Anthony Bradley several years ago and which, it must be said, are relatively innocuous, particularly relative to the ways in which countless other teaching elders on all sides of the PCA have sometimes spoken of one another. Again, there may be more here than has been publicized so far—other examples of Garris’s speech that the presbytery considered and caused them to make these charges.

Yet since the presbytery has not made any public statements, we are left with a minister charged with a ninth commandment violation over what are pretty innocuous tweets, relative to how ordained ministers in the church routinely speak on social media. Not only that, but because he was formally charged and because he did not repent, the PCA’s Book of Church Order (30-1) requires his indefinite suspension—meaning that the presbytery’s decision to make this particular charge in the way they did combined with Garris’s refusal to repent automatically triggered an indefinite suspension.

One hopes that more information about the proceedings of Garris’s trial will be made public soon. But based on what is publicly verifiable at time of writing, it certainly appears that the Rio Grande presbytery handled the affair poorly by failing to do due diligence regarding Garris’s words, behaviors, and associates, by failing to anticipate how this case would affect the purity and peace of the denomination, and by failing to make details of the case which can be publicized public in order to avoid outcomes in which onlookers lose faith in denominational processes. We can only hope that when the meetings of the presbytery’s meetings on this are produced that a less incompetent picture emerges.

In any case, as things stand right now the outcome of all this is likely to be quite bad for the peace and purity of the PCA. The presbytery took what ought to have been a fairly simple case regarding the sin of racism and managed to handle it in a way that has made Garris a sympathetic figure both by the way the timing of the trial was stretched out and by convicting him over what is, if an offense at all, a fairly minor one—and one that would, if applied equally across the denomination, tie the church up in endless trials and adjudication. And that, of course, is precisely what may happen if things continue to go poorly.

Why Organizational Competence is a Non-Negotiable

There are many things one might say about this sad affair. But the main thought I have had is the same one I’ve had for years when I consider the health of the PCA, which is my home denomination and has been for 20 years.

The challenge for the PCA is that the overwhelming majority of our teaching elders are simply ordinary pastors. They love to preach, to shepherd, and to evangelize. They are not terminally online. They do not know the ins and outs of esoteric political theology disputes. They are not kinists. And yet a sizable portion of our communion, precisely because of their admirable and good pietism, are radically unprepared to navigate the procedural rules that govern presbyterian churches. If it is accurate, as some have reported, that Garris’s defense was led by multiple lawyers while the prosecution in his case had no lawyers... well, there you have it.

Too often, these common failures of the pietists in our church have been minimized or dismissed by many. Set next to the realities of preaching, shepherding, and evangelization, knowing the ins and outs of the Book of Church Order (the rule book which defines how our denomination functions formally) seems unimportant. But a case like this highlights precisely why procedural competence is so important.

This ought to have been a simple and straightforward case. You take Garris’s words, behavior, and associations. You take the PCA’s official position on racism. You compare the two. You conclude that Garris either needs to repent or he needs to be suspended because he has violated the first, sixth, and ninth commandments and is not repentant. It should not be hard—the publicly verifiable record here is quite clear. Yet because too many in the PCA have an indifferent relationship to polity and procedures, we make it difficult.

I am writing this not only because I care about the PCA, which I do, but because I care about the state of the broader church around the world. The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) has had its own struggles with institutional mismanagement in recent years, after all, as have most other evangelical denominations that I know of, to say nothing of the many non-denominational independent congregations that have had similar issues.

There is a broader difficulty here, of which the PCA and ACNA’s difficulties are exemplary: Evangelicals as a class tend to have an indifferent relationship to procedure, policy, and institutional norms. We value charisma and talent, but charisma and talent cut loose from the constraints and demands of healthy institutions have, repeatedly, proven themselves to be enormously destructive. That is the thread that runs through so many of the depressingly long list of stories that have plagued American evangelicalism over the past 10 years—whether it is the death of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, the decline or collapse of so many evangelical colleges and churches, the shocking waste of denominational funds across many different communions, or the specific scandals currently vexing so mny of our churches, far too often our organizations have been led by people that may be personally virtuous but who lack institutional competence. The outcomes of this are never good.

What we need—and I am inclined to place this quite high on the list of our needs—are healthy groups and movements that learn how to become healthy institutions. But if that is to happen, we will have to learn to care about administration, about policy, and about procedure. We will need to spend far more time in our proverbial Books of Church Order than most of us have to this point. Such work is unglamorous and even boring. But if good things are going to endure, that will usually require the support of an institution. And for institutions to endure, they need to be led by people who understand and value the procedures that govern and guard an institution’s life.

As I was writing my book, I was exploring the nature of Christian history. Christian history is not just the past, though it encompasses that. It is the meeting of past and future in the present. Eliot captured this well in “The Dry Salvages” from his “Four Quartets”:

Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.

For many, this is untenable. We only want the potential of the future — the better job, the better car, the better partner, and more. The present is where we situate our lives. It is the all-encompassing base from which we operate.

In my reading, I stumbled upon a quote by Joseph Ratzinger. In his book In the Beginning, he sets out to ground the creation narrative in its proper context as a story of all existence — naturally the origin, or pre-history, from which we draw. He writes: “Past, present, and future must encounter and penetrate one another in every human life.” In other words, a Christian view of history and reality must take into account the past, the present, and the future. He goes on: “Our age is the first to experience that hideous narcissism that cuts itself off from both past and future and that is preoccupied exclusively with its own present.”

Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy, in his book The Christian Future, writes that the Christian is “the founder and trustee of the future, the very process of finding and securing it, and without the Christian spirit there is no real future for man.” For Rosenstock-Huessy — and I find myself convinced by his argument — the Christian life is lived at the crossroads of four fronts.

Subscribe now

The first front looks backward, toward the past. Christians look back at what happened in order to understand what is, and what is to come. The second front looks forward, into the future — and this is the uniquely Christian contribution. The past met the future at the Cross, transformed reality, and set humanity on a trajectory toward something more. The third front looks inward, among ourselves: this is the front of personality, of our dreams, feelings, and wishes. The fourth and final front is outward. This front presses in on us from all sides — the external world with all its demands and pressures.

To neglect any of these fronts is fatal. Rosenstock-Huessy calls this intersection the “Cross of Reality” — the crossroads of all four fronts — and argues that it keeps us rooted and guards us from what he calls “complete contemporaneity.” This is what Lasch hints at as the permanent present, and what Frank Furedi, in his book The War Against the Past, refers to as “presentism.”

It is painfully obvious that modern man has detached from the past, but he’s also removed any means of thinking about the future. Limitations are viewed not as reminders of the fragility of life, but of the need to transcend reality. That hideous narcissism that Ratzinger talks about reigns supreme. Of course it would help if we did a bit of work on what we mean by the term itself. Narcissism is a term often thrown around. “He’s a narcissist.” “That person is a narcissist.” But Christopher Lasch, the culture critic and writer of the mid-twentieth century, found that narcissism isn’t just a personality trait. When psychoanalysts talked about narcissism they were often referring to self-love — a person so obsessed with themselves that they are incapable of thinking about another. For Lasch, narcissism was a cultural force, not just a personal character issue. He noted that the writer Tom Wolfe had highlighted—in his essay “The ‘Me’ Decade”—the mid-twentieth century as akin to a Third Great Awakening, an outbreak of “orgiastic, ecstatic religiosity” — the worship of the self.

The self is something of a loaded term. Thinkers like Taylor, Ricoeur, and MacIntyre view the self as narrative: who you are is a thread of meaning derived from the story of how you got here and where you are going. Others view the self as a social construct. George Herbert Mead understood the self as derived from social engagement — you come to know yourself by how others see you, the “looking-glass self.” Some New Age thinkers posit that the self is an illusion, not a coherent core but individual fragments that, when assembled, form something like a cohesive unit. Phenomenologists like Husserl and Heidegger pushed back against all of this and tried to ground the self in existence: the self must be embodied, located in a place, in a world, with others, and in a language. It is specific and particular.

But what about the self today? As I read the Ratzinger quote, and as I’ve been reading Lasch and reflecting on his work, I can’t help but think we are at a time where the “narcissism” they spoke of, has not only expanded, but it has morphed.

What I mean is that today the self is dominated by narcissism — though it has shifted back into being a personality trait rather than a cultural diagnosis. This is driven by social media and psychology, which through therapy helps people identify how their boss is a narcissist, their roommate is too self-focused to help clean the apartment, or why their last relationship failed. We have moved the narcissistic trait back from a social diagnosis (where Lasch situated it) to a personal one. One major effect of this is that relationships and work become inundated with attempts to escape the trait in others, and we operate as if our problems come from outside ourselves, not from us. For instance, if our boss is too demanding, if any form of discomfort is introduced, we quit.

The modern self desires many things, and we can trace several defining features. I hope to offer a sketch here of what makes up the hideous narcissism of the modern self and some of the key things missing from the modern self. I’ve already written a bit on the “self” before. So I apologize if you are “selfed out.” However, I do think Ratzinger’s warning is important for us today. That hideous narcissism threatens all aspects of life, including my own. If we don’t understand what it is, and how it plays in our lives, it’s much harder to fight against it.

So here are some ways the narcissistic self is expressed today.

Authenticity

The person seeks their true self within themselves not from without. “Be yourself.” “Find your truth.” “Live authentically.” Lionel Trilling, in Sincerity and Authenticity, observed that authenticity has come to mean moving against the current of conventional moral authority rather than with it. To do what is expected is insincere; to transgress is to be truly oneself. Part of this is the effect of Critical Theory, which views even self-expression through the lens of power dynamics. The self as authentic interior dominates conversations around gender and identity — the true self is hidden within and needs to be expressed outward.

Consumer aesthetic

Modern identity goes hand in hand with lifestyle and trend. What we wear signals status. As American culture grows more complex, subcultures multiply, and identity becomes a matter of curation. If you spend all of five minutes on Instagram, you’ll see what I mean. Every other video is a person showing off style. Style is class and class is status.

Psychological interior

This is evident in the enormous popularity of books like The Body Keeps Score, which affirms the trauma-informed development of the modern person. The language that dominates this version of the self is therapeutic: trauma, attachment styles, triggers, boundaries. Each of these terms conveys that the self is developed by what happens to us, not what we commit to, or what we believe about ourselves and the world. We often mistake therapeutic language for self-knowledge, and self-knowledge for growth. If we are moving so far forward in our understanding of our trauma, why are we more miserable than ever? Rosenstock Huessy writes about “suburban man” but it seems apropos here: “there is a paradox about suburban man: he lives amid too much peace, but he knows little peace within.”

Performance and recognition

The self is not only authenticity-seeking but audience-seeking. We post online to give meaning to the self through recognition — the self is performed in the theatre of modern opinion. Mead’s looking-glass is prescient for social media. Lasch found that the self is empty at the center and requires constant external input to feel real. The metrics of recognition — likes, follows, engagement — become proxies for self-worth.

Identity category

Here again Critical Theory shapes the field. The self is understood as a constellation of categories: gender, sexuality, race, and more. When we identify with a category, that category must be affirmed without qualification. Any divergence from this expectation is treated as a social infraction akin to soft murder. Community forms not around growth and productive tension, but around affirmation.

Autonomous will

Running through all of this is what Michael Sandel called “the unencumbered self” (his essay is well worth reading when you have the time) — a self whose defining feature is not the ends it chooses but its sheer capacity to choose them. Sandel wrote this in the 1980s during the Reagan years, but his words feel more urgent now. No matter the consequences of certain decisions — gender reassignment surgery, MAID — the modern self demands the freedom to make them. The choice itself is sacred; the result is tertiary.

So what is missing today?

Obligation and commitment

Obligation is increasingly experienced as tyranny. We dislike being bound to someone else’s time or needs, preferring instead to be our own autonomous agents. And yet commitment is not a cage — it is the very condition in which character and love become possible.

I’m reminded of a job I had out of college. I was juggling seminary alongside three part-time jobs, trying not to go into debt. One summer, at the pool store where I worked a third of my hours, I was tasked with interviewing a few high schoolers for seasonal work. One of them sat down across from me, and I asked the standard question: “So what does your schedule look like?” He thought for a moment and said, “Well, I’d like to have weekends free to hang out with my friends. Fridays too.”

I was dumbfounded. Growing up, my parents had drilled into me that in an interview you say: I will work whenever and however long you need. This young man had apparently received different instruction entirely.

It would be easy to chalk this up to one kid, but it isn’t one kid. Our lives are increasingly organized around fun and pleasure, and obligation is recast as an obstacle — a limitation on our freedom to pursue what we actually want. Commitment, in this frame, is something you tolerate until something better comes along.

Suffering and limits

Pope Leo recently wrote: “Our relationship with life seems to be in crisis today. Everything that appears as a ‘limit’ — incapacity, illness, old age, suffering, vulnerability — tends to be seen primarily as a defect to be corrected, rather than as a reality through which our humanity matures and opens itself to relationship. And yet we must remember that humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them.” This is one of the great ailments of modern society. Constraints are viewed as impositions, roadblocks on the path to happiness. When we see a path that may have them, we don’t turn around but instead try to go off roading and find our own way. But they—limits—are in fact what enable us to flourish as finite beings created by an infinite God. To accept limits is to accept our nature as created things. We despise them, perhaps, because we secretly wish to be like God. I’m reminded that Eve was tempted to transcend the limits of her present situation. To become “like God.” This temptation is ever calling and ever more appealing to the modern self.

Similar to Pope Leo’s comment, Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy writes that:

“The greatest temptation of our time is impatience, in its full original meaning: refusal to wait, undergo, suffer. We seem unwilling to pay the price of living with our fellows in creative and profound relationships. From marriage to teaching, from government to handicraft, man’s relation to man has become segregated, impatient, non-committal in the machine age.”

We are unwilling to suffer for through suffering we are reminded of our own limits and finite reality.

History and tradition

Lasch found that the tyranny of the present leads us to view the past not as a resource to mine and learn from, but as a reminder of an inferior time. Lasch writes that:

“The narcissist has no interest in the future because, in part, he has so little interest in the past. He finds it difficult to internalize happy associations or to create a store of loving memories with which to face the latter part of his life, which under the best of conditions always brings sadness and pain. In a narcissistic society—a society that gives increasing prominence and encouragement to narcissistic traits—the cultural devaluation of the past reflects not only the poverty of the prevailing ideologies, which have lost their grip on reality and abandoned the attempt to master it, but the poverty of the narcissist’s inner life.”

Yet as Christians we are called to hold a faith deeply rooted in history — it is from the past action of God in Christ that we draw present and future hope. To remove the roots is to down the tree. Christians must be at the forefront of the valuation of history — that those who came before us matter and have much to teach us.

The self in relation

Online life thrives in part because within its confines the self is rarely confronted. We choose our relations and remove those who impact us negatively. Dating apps extend this logic: we swipe away who we don’t want and meet those we do, but only momentarily. To settle down is to place yourself in genuine relation to another person — and that is precisely what the modern self resists. Yet the creation was declared good, and the only thing that was not good was for man to be alone. We were made for one another. The church as body is meant to invoke this reality: each person needs the other, and the other needs each person.

A telos

When we remove the beginning — history — we also remove the end. Time collapses into the present: our present desires, present wishes, present dreams. But the self cannot flourish without knowing it is for something beyond itself. We live not for ourselves. Paul writes that “you are not your own” but belong to God. And yet we fear death. MAID is an egregious blight on modern life — the destruction of persons because they choose it. The self wants no part in the uncertainty of the end, so it seeks to control and harness it. We try to give life, and we try to choose when we leave it. Foucault, for all his faults, made an interesting observation about asylums: by removing the impaired from society, we created a space where we defined sanity — and those who didn’t conform were cast out of sight. We suppressed what we didn’t want to see. Modern society does the same with death. The more that the limits of life — and its end — are moved from our sight, the more the self imagines it can flourish. Instead, we are left ungrounded. We are all going to die, and those who have been most shielded from this reality will have the hardest time accepting it.

All in all, the modern self is remarkably free and remarkably miserable. Liberated from limits and boundaries, we find we are not walking toward anything — only away from something. The hunger we feel for meaning, purpose, permanence, and recognition points beyond the self, revealing what it is missing. And ultimately, it is the good news of Jesus Christ that can fully root and give the self what it so desperately needs.

So much seems to be going wrong in our society. There is so much dissent, there are so many acts of violence, and there is so much division about the acts of violence. So much worry, anxiety, depression.

Many of us in economically prosperous nations feel that “society is broken” and declining. So much seems outside our control. The crises seem political, economic, and technological in nature; no doubt, such forces are changing our world and presenting new challenges. Yet the deepest roots of our problems are more basic. They involve personal and social order, direction, and purpose. The deepest roots of our problems are spiritual.

Take just one unspeakably horrific example that has become a recurring and all-too-familiar feature of our news cycles: school shootings. Americans have had access to guns for decades and centuries. In the early twentieth century students even regularly shot, hunted, and participated in school-based gun clubs. Only in the last few decades have school shootings…

Read more

Theodore Dalrymple. Agatha Christie and the Metaphysics of Murder. $19.99. 168 pp.

When I was in high school, I read Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None at breakneck speed to figure out the identity of the murderer. The shocking ending left me desiring more and was the beginning of my enjoyment of Christie. I am not alone, it seems. Whodunits remain popular, as readers delight at the prospect of an evening armed with their favorite blanket, beverage, and (paradoxically) a cozy murder. At the center of this genre is Christie, “the Queen of Mystery,” the best-selling novelist of all-time for her brilliant Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot series, as well as numerous standalone mysteries. Her writing established the genre as we know it. Today’s mystery writers still rely on her techniques and tropes.

Retired physician, prison psychiatrist, and conservative social critic, Theodore Dalrymple, combines his professional experience and knowledge with his enjoyment of Agatha Christie in this…

Read more

It is apt that one of the deadliest computer viruses was named after the Trojan Horse. The original Trojan Horse, made of wood, was a giant automaton-like statue that, in Greek myth, provided the only way for the Greeks to finally defeat the Trojans after a ten-year stalemate of a brutal war. The Horse was a trick—its wooden body hollow by design, so warriors filled it to the brim. When the Trojans brought the statue into their city, choosing to believe it was a sacred gift to the gods, the warriors poured out at night, taking over the city unawares.

Then the slaughter began in earnest. None of the men survived. Women and children who survived were captured, brutalized in the most horrific ways imaginable—and some that we thankfully cannot even fully imagine—then sold into slavery. In other words, the simple technological advancement that the Trojan Horse represents made possible the destruction of an entire civilization overnight.

The presumed sacred nature of the Horse is apt as well—…

Read more

In Christian higher education, we practice something often called “faith integration.” The goal is for faculty to bring faith into their classes, connecting faith with their discipline. Some people prefer other terms, like “faith-infused,” or something else, but the idea is always about connecting faith with the classroom and education. It is part of what distinguishes Christian universities from other universities.

In my university’s honors program, faith integration is often relatively straightforward. After all, we assign faith-related reading every semester. We have a chronological Great Books sequence and we pride ourselves on our broad coverage of “The Great Conversation.” In their first semester, students read Plato and Aristotle and Homer and Sophocles and Thucydides alongside portions of the Old Testament. The core of our honors sequence extends across six semesters and by the time our students finish, they’ve been assigned more reading than most undergraduates. This includes …

Read more

Myles Werntz. Contesting the Body of Christ: Ecclesiology’s Revolutionary Century. Baker Academic, 2025. $24.99. 200 pp.

“I believe in the church.”

This article of the Christian faith seems unusual compared to others in the church’s creeds. Our faith, like everything else about us, is fallible and marked by sin. Still, this is a confession of God’s divine action and preservation of Christ’s body. There is a church, and it is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. But what does this pronouncement look like in practice? The early twentieth century’s ecumenical movement had promising energy, but it has largely faded. Now, after a century marked by fragmentation, schism, and deepening denominational stratification, discussions of the church and its oneness seem exhausting and exhausted.

Yet Myles Werntz’s Contesting the Body of Christ: Ecclesiology’s Revolutionary Century is a refreshing and welcome contribution. The twentieth century, the “century of the church,” witnessed the rise of the mode…

Read more

From Jake: It is a significant day in the life of Mere Orthodoxy. Today we launch our new website and member dashboard. But behind that launch is a much larger story about the work that media projects like our own have to do today. It is a truism at this point to lament the division, anger, and extremism that is now ubiquitous in American life. But hidden inside the many problems now afflicting us is an exciting opportunity.

Mere Orthodoxy exists to form Christians in the church who participate in broader culture for the common good. Today’s essay is my attempt to reflect on that opportunity by talking about how we got here, what challenges we now face as both Christians and members of a pluralistic civic experiment, and what we at Mere O are doing to try and seize the opportunity before us to build up both the church and our civic life.

We built the website and member dashboard not simply because we need a website of some kind, but because we want the site and member dashboard themselv…

Read more

This essay is adapted from The Augustinian Pastor: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Ministry (Baker Academic, 2026).

One Sunday morning in Hippo Regius, many years into his service as bishop, Augustine’s regular preaching duties coincided with the anniversary of the day he was ordained to the priesthood. Perhaps feeling a bit nostalgic, Augustine reflected in the sermon on the sense of the heavy responsibility that he had assumed when he became a pastor. In the homily that morning, Augustine singles out a specific and perhaps surprising aspect of the calling that he found especially challenging: the honor that accompanied the office. “From the moment this burden… was placed on my shoulders, anxiety about the honor shown me has always been haunting me.” In his preaching to the flock that morning, Augustine identifies one of the central temptations that can accompany the pastoral vocation: the possibility that his congregation might admire him, that they would esteem him. “What, though, is to b…

Read more

As students met this spring to launch our first Coverdale House reading group, we followed a standard format for the evening: we ate, we prayed, and we got down to the business of carefully reading and discussing. It’s the second step of that process that I would like to talk about here. Prayer is an important part of the intellectual life. The great Presbyterian theologian B. B. Warfield, in his famous address “The Religious Life of Theological Students,” critiqued an overly pietistic contrast between the spiritual life and the intellectual life thus: “Sometimes we hear it said that ten minutes on your knees will give a truer, deeper, more operative knowledge of God than ten hours over your books. ‘What!’ is the appropriate response, ‘than ten hours over your books on your knees?’” Evidently Warfield wished his seminarians to study their books, yes, for ten hours, but be praying all the while. Hans Urs von Balthasar put it even more succinctly: the Christian thinker is engaged in a k…

Read more

In 1 BC, a man named Hilarion wrote a letter to his pregnant wife, Alis, while he was away on business in Alexandria. The letter survives on papyrus, preserved by two thousand years of dry Egyptian air. He asks about her health. He tells her to take care of herself. And then, almost in the same breath:

If you bear a child, if it is a boy, let it live. If it is a girl, expose it.

One sentence without anguish or apology. Just instruction.

What Hilarion wrote was not considered monstrous in his world, his legal system, or to his gods. Roman law gave the paterfamilias, the father and head of household, the power to accept or reject a newborn. Acceptance meant lifting the child from the floor where it had been placed after birth. Rejection meant leaving it there, to be carried outside the city and abandoned to the elements, to wild animals, or to whoever might find it first.

The practice had a name. It was called exposure. It was legal, widespread, and morally accepted.

What we would call murde…

Read more

There are moments when you realize the tradition you love is larger than the version you inherited. Ida B. Wells, a Presbyterian, has recently done that for me, and her faithful witness deepens how I live faith in the public square.

I remembered her name only dimly from high school history class. Wells was a crusader against lynching through her journalism, and later a key figure in the suffragist movement and the NAACP. Over the past year, I have felt a conviction to study her life, notably her courage, gumption, and refusal to stay silent.

As a young journalist, Wells reported on lynching with a specificity no one else dared, and her work brought its scourge into the consciousness of both Black and white Americans. Eventually, she would own her own newspaper in Memphis, only to have a white mob destroy the printing office and threaten her life, forcing her into literal exile. Wells went on to play a significant leadership role within the American suffrage movement, working alongside f…

Read more

Our lives are full of trouble. That much is clear.

Marriages fracture. Families feud. Churches split. For those serious about faith, the complications compound — unanswered questions about God, revelation, salvation that no one can fully resolve and everyone argues about anyway. The menu of ancient and modern wisdom promising to help is longer than anyone could absorb in several lifetimes.

What if most of it traces back to one thing?

C. S. Lewis didn’t set out to write a book about pride. The Great Divorce is a fantasy about souls who refuse Heaven’s invitation — some pious, some pitiful, all fatal. Look closer, and the reasons for their refusal collapse into one. Every shade in Lewis’s gallery is a variation on the same theme: the deadly sin of pride, the self turned inward, the will that insists on its own way even at the cost of everything else.

Pride hides in plain sight, usually wearing the face of a virtue. Inwardly, it inflates — overconfidence in one’s intelligence, moral standing…

Read more

Open the door. Set my bag down. Turn on light number one. Turn on the library light. Walk upstairs. Walk back down. Open the computer to check emails. Look at the to-do list. Look at the calendar. Wonder how it is already May.

Bank statements are due soon. Graduation is coming.

Did I ask the professors to be there early? Yes, I did. How am I going to get the flowers and the cake both at 4 and be ready for the walkthrough? I need a clone. Did I submit that invoice? We need the water filter changed. Did the cleaners vacuum? I need to call them.

The to-do list piles against me, and just before the lump in my throat surfaces, I am paused in motion. By an all too familiar sound. It is Thursday morning. The preaching lab is being taught in the classroom overhead. The walls of this building are extremely thin, which can sometimes be a blessing. During these times, when future church leaders are giving a sermon for their class, they always begin with a hymn. As the powerful, deep, male voices si…

Read more

James Baird’s new book King of Kings: A Reformed Guide to Christian Government is exactly the sort of volume I appreciate. It is cleanly written, succinct, and analytically clear enough to allow for ready engagement. And I’m largely sympathetic to its driving concern—the relevance of the Christian message for all domains of life, including politics—even if I fundamentally disagree with some aspects of Baird’s formulation.

Indeed, I found King of Kings a fascinating and challenging read precisely because I agree with so much of it. Earlier in my career, I spent several years as a senior political staffer in the U.S. Senate. Many young Christians who find their way to Capitol Hill are passionate about the life of the unborn, about protecting a biblical understanding of marriage and gender, about defending religious liberty, and so on—as I am. But one of the things that surprises many people is how little time Congress spends working on those issues on a day-to-day basis. These all typica…

Read more

Luke Burgis. The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion. St. Martin’s Press, 2026. $30.00. 288 pp.

Ever since Robert Putnam wrote Bowling Alone, the discourse around society has often emphasized social fragmentation and isolation. There are books and essays about the decline of fraternal organizations, third spaces, and church membership and the rising isolating effects of social media, remote work, and delayed marriage. Most cultural criticism is worried about a decline in belonging and attributes much of our bad behavior to that. But what if we’re actually pretty good at joining a crowd and we’re missing some other issues by bemoaning the loss of bowling leagues? Luke Burgis’ new book, The One and the Ninety-Nine, suggests we should spend some time thinking about a differentiated self and better ways of belonging.

The One and the Ninety-Nine rests on a “simple” premise: “Each of us is torn between belonging and differentiation, and few ever learn to m…

Read more

​​​​Reuben Bredenhof. The Ministry of Small Things. P&R Publishing, 2026. $12.99 (pb). 144 pp.

What ought to occupy a pastor’s time? Reuben Bredenhof, who pastored Reformed congregations for almost two decades in both Canada and Australia and now teaches at Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary offers the expected answer: the Word, sacraments and prayer.

And yet, The Ministry of Small Things, is not a book about preaching, nor sacraments, nor is it primarily about prayer (some portions notwithstanding) but rather it seeks “to unpack one more significant element in the minister’s job description: pastoral care.”

While English resources on preaching and prayer are virtually endless (resources on the sacraments, less so), it is the view of this author that for every young minister who needs to have the ordinary means of grace underscored, there are five, if not ten, who need a reminder not to despise the small things.

Reflecting on church farewells, Bredenhof recalls what he most often rece…

Read more