"We are rediscovering Pennington because he made a difference during his lifetime. He changed hearts, minds, laws, and social practices through his speeches, sermons, writings, organizing, acts of civil disobedience, tireless movement work... Perhaps we can too." bit.ly/3Y5ZkN4

“My colleagues and I have discovered four criteria—two internal and two external—that seem to mark the difference between thriving and failure.” @brvnathan.bsky.social explores why institutions flourish or fail.

“The wisdom preserved by tradition presents us with templates that can be useful in understanding how contemporary institutions are working for or against God’s will in the present day.” Cassandra Nelson on hierarchy’s place in the story of salvation.

“Perhaps it’s not so much that love must be expressed as the gift of pain as that it demands to be given somehow, and sometimes pain is all one has to give.”

On a new episode of Conversing, Matthew J. Milliner reflects on Mary as presence, witness, and theological key to understanding God’s entry into human life.

“Advent isn’t a season in which we force ourselves to be quiet and sad; it’s the season in which the long, cradled quiet reveals how hungry and grieved we are.”

“Christmas is a strange time to be reminded that we, and indeed most of humanity, often ignore what Christ offers.”

“G.K. Chesterton said that the poets have been strangely silent on the subject of cheese; and theologians, it seems to me, have been strangely silent on the subject of coral.”

“Institutions are the structures that teach people how to bring moral ambition into contact with the world in a way that is productive, sustainable, resilient, and ultimately fulfilling.”

“Here lies a word of wisdom: invest unstintingly in social institutions, but know that your value transcends them. This can enable you to ride the stormy waves of institutional change with inner calm.”

“Zoomers appear to be deeply conflicted: they feel a strong pull toward institutions, but also a strong repulsion at anything that doesn’t feel appropriately ethical, pure, communal, or powerful.”

“Pennington drew on deep reservoirs of personal resilience and self-reliance. He worked within institutions but did not derive his worth from them.” Jennifer Herdt on James Pennington’s life with institutions.

“Why is it that young people crave the specific ballast that institutions offer but seem almost incapable of walking into them and accepting the humble, sensible realities they embody?” April Lawson on institutionalizing Gen Z.

“We have become accustomed to understanding ourselves as spectators of a world out of our control. If we want to be more than that, we must churn our discontent into a will to act together.”

“Darwin tells me something about the formation of coral, but his more troubling questions (and potential answers) would come later. And I have those troubling questions as well, Lord.”

“If the late Darwin said “science has nothing to do with Christ,” it was because he was too unfamiliar with Augustine, Dionysius, Irenaeus, and Maximus, who have helped me.”

“Endless eons of death untold mean the rock I hold is but one of a trillion tragic tombstones. Attractive as the God-drenched mysticism of St. Dionysius may be, if I do hold “you” in my hand, I am horrified.”

“We don’t know how to talk about the primary advantages of institutions: their ability to facilitate effective action in the world—interpersonally, communally, locally, nationally, globally. Every institution begins from a shared practical goal.”

“Coral, as I see it, is an uncategorizable thing: it is tree, animal, and mineral at once.” @millinerd.bsky.social on Christ and coral.

“Living in New York, a city of constant development and seemingly bottomless wealth, and coming back to Renovo, I found the contrast hard to bear. It was like watching a person you love slowly waste away. Mostly you accept it, and at other moments you feel a sharp sadness.”

“Our society feels a palpable desire and need to “do something together.” And that means we feel the need for revitalizing core institutions—even if we cannot yet quite name the need we feel.”

“I don’t need to “deconstruct” my faith because I have read Dionysius the Areopagite, who does such a better job of that than modern Christians, all the while pointing me to the un-deconstructible mystery of Christ.”

“Populism is an outlet for rage at this condition, but it is not a solution to it. It yields a politics of spectators, and its chief mode of action is powerless criticism, often tied up with conspiracism.”

“Silence is less a void than a cradle, an emptied chamber of the self where divinity may alight, tender and unannounced.”

“These human-made kingdoms have always existed alongside the sacred, competing for our attention with the non-material reality that art makes perceptible.”

“Part of why this moment of institutional precarity feels painful—but also interesting—is that many of the institutions now being battered were already down for the count.”

“In the final moment, when the immensity of his presence left all of us who loved him, he became who he would be for the remainder of our lives: cherished memory and terrible absence.”

“There was absolutely no part of me that believed my eternal salvation hinged on wearing a head covering, and I was finally in a place where I could put that conviction into action.”

“It is in the interest of technocracies everywhere to expand the power of what we can do while minimizing the involvement of other people as much as possible.”

“It is a miracle indeed that two people ever marry and live together. It is a greater miracle if they manage it as long as they both shall live.”

“We took on faith that crime and social decay happened out there, in inner-city districts like West Philly and the South Bronx. Out there had become here.”

“In our own denominationally walled cities, we may feel that we and our children are somehow extra–safe. But experiences like mine on the Camino suggest otherwise—we need ecumenism, too, to strengthen faith.”

“What we are seeing is not just disengagement but a widespread failure to launch: people unsure how, or why, to enter fully into life.”

“We need to emphasize what stronger institutions could offer in this moment, not just what they demand. What they offer is agency. And that is precisely what our moment sorely lacks.” Yuval Levin makes the case for functional institutions as vital instruments of action.

“Institutions are not just organizations but organizations imbued with special meaning. An institution, rightly understood, is a living tradition—a patterned form of human relationship that binds freedom to purpose, memory to responsibility.”

“Our leaders fail to act effectively because they think they need to break the institutions they lead in order to act. But in fact, they need to embody and inhabit their roles in those institutions in order to act.” Yuval Levin on the vitality of institutions.

“Living in New York, a city of constant development and seemingly bottomless wealth, and coming back to Renovo, I found the contrast hard to bear. It was like watching a person you love slowly waste away.”

“Instead of gazing into this room from my kitchen window as I’d done hundreds of times as a boy, I stared back at my old house. It looked close enough to reach out and touch.”

“In our own denominationally walled cities, we may feel that we and our children are somehow extra-safe. But experiences like mine on the Camino suggest otherwise—we need ecumenism, too, to strengthen faith.” Dixie Dillon Lane on ecumenism and pilgrimage.

“At midlife, I had come to understand that leaving this tiny Appalachian town had been the most consequential act of my life. I still felt a strong pull back there.” Steven Kurutz on the places we leave behind.

“It is in the interest of technocracies everywhere to expand the power of what we can do while minimizing the involvement of other people as much as possible.” Karl Johnson on the surgeon general’s quest for community.

“It is a miracle indeed that two people ever marry and live together. It is a greater miracle if they manage it as long as they both shall live.” Nishon Schick on fathers and mothers, Robert Farrar Capon, and the grace of marriage.

“I try to hold in my mind who he was: the sound of his voice, his laugh, his deep knowledge of planes, of American history, how he always asked about the health of my car. I try to remember that that person is also this person.”

“Evangelicalism brought me into the church, and thanks be to God it will continue to do that for many more. But no fish should be satisfied with the net and should instead wriggle up its fragile filaments to the ecclesial boat as fast as its scales will take it.”

“I dared not ask my questions aloud. I would be questioning the entire basis of a long-standing practice central to Mennonite belief and identity, and I did not care to be labelled a heretic.”

“In the final moment, when the immensity of his presence left all of us who loved him, he became who he would be for the remainder of our lives: cherished memory and terrible absence.” William Montei on awaiting a good death.

“There was absolutely no part of me that believed my eternal salvation hinged on wearing a head covering, and I was finally in a place where I could put that conviction into action.” Nichole Baumer on wrestling with Scripture, identity, and tradition.

“The Christianity of public figures such as Peterson and Musk reminds me not so much of Christ as of Machiavelli.” Jessica Hooten Wilson with a call to be obscurely good.

“The Mass I attend is not about political victories or defeats. It is about encountering Christ made present on the altar. Catholicism is not a partisan project; it is a sacramental reality.”

“It is at the apex of human fragility, where our limitation and freedom meet, that God moves salvation history forward.”