Sorry, been a bit off the grid, but trying to claw my way back now.

Nice review of Marilynne Robinson’s new novel Jack.  This struck me as especially acute: “few read Marilynne Robinson’s novels for plot or social commentary. She belongs to the American tradition of visionary Protestantism (and post-Protestantism) that runs from John Cotton and Jonathan Edwards to Emerson, Melville, and Whitman. Their stylistic extravagance and metaphysical daring all makes sense in light of (Robinson’s understanding of) “Calvin’s metaphor—nature is a shining garment in which God is revealed and concealed.” There is no register too exalted to do creation justice.”  

Beginning this week, a miniseries on John Brown (based on the amazing novel The Good Lord Bird) is bringing Brown back to us all.  This piece explores some of the ways he’s been remembered.  Having spent a bunch of my teenage years in Hudson, Ohio—where Brown was raised—I’m interested.  And knowing Ted Smith, whose book Weird John Brown is still among the most penetrating visions of political theology out there, I’m intrigued by the idea that he might have something to say on this too.

This is the beginning of an interesting conversation on a recent book on thinking about churches and corporations in US law.  

Looking forward to Foucault’s Confessions of the Flesh coming out in English in a few months.  I predict it will change our perception of what he was about.

Are we living at the “hinge of history”?  This piece offers a quick account of what this debate is about, and why it might matter.  (One question about this: why are these questions only being asked in the UK?  That’s actually two questions: Why do people in the UK find them so interesting? and Why do people outside the UK not find them as interesting?) 

Great piece about the “fall” of a Cardinal, Cardinal Becciu, in Rome in the past week—a great look at Vatican politics right now:

the fall of Becciu shouldn’t be seen in isolation, but rather in the context of the disconnects between Francis and the Curia, and their effects on his mission of reaching the peripheries he so often refers to. It reflects a more general problem of balance between spiritual reform and good governance, and of the unfortunate separation of the institutional and charismatic dimensions of the Church (as so tragically exemplified by the sex-abuse crisis). On the right bank of Rome’s Tiber River is the burial site of Peter, which symbolizes the church of institutional leadership of Peter and his successors (St. Peter’s Basilica), and on the left bank the charismatic church of Paul (the basilica of St. Paul outside the Walls). Being pope, pontifex, is also about rebuilding the bridges between these two banks.

All of these are great, but for me, Scarlatti and Bach remain most gripping.  And now I have a new name from this, too: Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer.

Now here’s an interesting way of thinking about things:  If inequality had not grown as it has, from 1975 to 2018, the median income for a full-time worker would not be, as it is, $50,000, but $92,000.  Someone in the 25th percentile (the lowest quarter of the income bracket) would not be getting $33,000 but $61,000.  Someone at the 95th percentile would not be getting $ 191,000, but $ 198,000.  Meanwhile, someone at the 99th percentile would not be getting $761,000, they would be getting $560,000.   Basically everyone but the super-top income earners would be doing a LOT better. And the 1% would not exactly be suffering.

Tell me again why we let this happen?