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A specter haunts George Marsden: the specter of modern liberalism. What did it promise? How did it fail? What comes next? To explore these questions, Marsden's essay on American public intellectual culture since the 1950s follows some famous middlebrow and scholarly writers—creators of America's modern "liberal consensus"—into the 1960s. This era, Marsden argues, was the eve of the greatest American crisis since the American Revolution. Even after the guns went silent in 1945, the fragrance of unity that Americans enjoyed…

The question of this guest-edited issue of Perspectives can be asked in two ways. First, we are asking a broad question: How does Christian theology illuminate the weight and depth of our day-to-day lives, such that our lives can be experienced and shaped in accord with that weight and depth? As David Bentley Hart has recently claimed in "The Experience of God" (Yale, 2013), "We have, in fact, no direct access to nature as such; we can approach nature only…

Below is a letter from an old friend, Karis, who now serves as dean of the chapel at Despondent University in up-state Washington, in WantMore County. We share a faithful correspondence through letters. Occasionally she writes something that I like to share. Despondent University, est. 1849 May 6, 2014 Dear Trygve, It's graduation day at Despondent University. It's typical Northwest atmosphere. The clouds hang low, and a slow drizzle threatens the moment. Yet, despite the concrete sky, an atmosphere of…

I have been told that I have a tendency to ruin cultural outings with my penchant for theological critique. I try really hard to rein it in, but sometimes I just can't help myself. It might have happened last month, when I took my 4-year-old son to see "The Wizard of Oz." It was an Andrew Lloyd Webber production, with many of the classic songs from the 1939 movie and a few new songs written for this play. One of…

The apostle Paul ends 1 Corinthians 13 with the words "And so these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love." In the Christian tradition from Augustine to Aquinas and beyond, "these three" become the three theological virtues. For love, we get a list of how-to's in the same chapter: love is not rude; it rejoices with the truth. In Hebrews 11, we get a list of heroes of faith. But what to say about…