David A. Garner

The Briefing: 2.28.14

Each Friday we compile a list of interesting links and articles our editors find from across the web. Here’s what’s catching our eye this week. Ross Douthat on religious experience and it’s role in modern life: In a sense, it’s hard to imagine a better illustration of Taylor’s argument than the Verhoeven-Ono contrast. In the […]

Nicholas Olson

Olson's Favorite Films of 2013

1. The Past (Asghar Farhadi, France) Not only does Asghar Farhadi’s followup to the critically acclaimed A Separation firmly establish the Iranian director as one of our master storytellers, it also, more specifically, establishes him as one of contemporary cinema’s great investigators of domestic drama. The way Farhadi controls narrative structure by gradually unveiling withheld […]

Joshua Ramos

Nativity: Embodiment of Future and Faith

The fertility gap between the religious and nonreligious will be a primary factor in the reversal of Western secularization, argues Joshua Ramos.

Tripp York

“No higher than the epiglottis . . . “

Denmark is banning halal and kosher slaughter of animals, because such killing requires that the animal be conscious when killed. They want them to feel it, I guess. And because some folks in Denmark thinks it’s unnecessarily cruel (cough, giraffe, cough cough, zoothanasia, cough), others folks are referring to their legislation as an interference with […]

Rebecca Lauren

Eve’s Side

In this poem by Rebecca Lauren, Eve speaks of creation.

Rebecca Parker Payne

This Cursed Womb

This essay explores the space between the physical and the spiritual where the Eden curse still interferes and casts a visceral darkness over women today.