The theme, rendered in the form of a question, recurs over and over again in the history of the arts: Why are so many creative geniuses such terrible, mean-spirited human beings? Then the second question rising from its wake, forcing a decision by all admirers of any given artist’s work: “Can I still love the art if I come to hate the artist for all his misdeeds?”

(I use the masculine pronoun there with purpose, given that most artists whose creations have been admitted to the canon of so-called Great Works over the centuries have been male [and been chosen by other males, surprise surprise!]. That bare and sorry fact means vastly more of them present the archetype of the rebellious, inner-directed artist than do women, and do so in a much more dramatic, outward-bound way.)

The critic (and creative artist in her own right) Claire Dederer has been rolling these questions over in her fertile mind for man...

Two events drew my attention and stood in severe contrast last week. One was coming across the 2020 Showtime mini-series, “The Good Lord Bird,” about pre-Civil War abolitionist John Brown and his star-crossed effort in 1859 to spark a slave revolt that he convinced himself would spread from Harpers Ferry, Virginia throughout the Southern states and effectively bring an end to slavery in America.

The second was news out of the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) annual meeting last week in New Orleans, at which delegates voted on an amendment to the organization’s constitution that would bring it in line with the tradition’s “statement of faith” that specifically says, “the office of pastor is limited to men.”

What brings these two occurrences together is the radical disparity in the main protagonists’ views on faith and freedom, unbound.

On the surface, Brown would seem to have much in common with the ...

History just keeps confounding us—both as we look back upon it with modern sensibilities (“How could they have???”) and how it unfolds in front of us in real time. (“Could this really be happening?”)

But there’s also an in-between take on history that is the recent past. Viewed more from the vantage point of years rather than decades or centuries, it follows upon daily journalism’s “first draft of history” with enough data and perspective to weave together a more complete picture of issues that have vexed or misled us in the whirlwind of everyday life.

Early this past week, “New York Times” columnist David French, a conservative  evangelical Christian, anti-abortion advocate and former attorney who specialized in cases defending religious liberty, did something unusual in the largely partisan world of opinion-mongering. He examined actual data about abortion trends since Roe v...

I’ve become ever more convinced with age that It’s not so much the plain fact of death that people fear as they face the downslope of their allotted years on earth. It’s not death but the nature of the dying that furrows their brows during conversations about the end of life.

At least that’s how it is for me and most every aged peer I talk to when conversations—not all of them, but many—at least touch on who’s in the hospital now, who’s going in soon, who’s getting out, and whether the getting out is to go home, go to the nursing home, or go to the morgue.

And the last of those is the least of most everyone’s worries.

The thought of death is dwarfed first by the fear of unrelieved physical pain, though modern methods and attitudes toward pain management have significantly reduced the incidence and concern that one’s end may be accompanied by acute bodily suffering.

It’s another fear that strikes the mo...

Sixth century B.C. Greek philosopher Heraclitus, like many who came before and after him, noted the endless flux of existence, he with a particularly rich metaphor that ensured his name would be etched forevermore into the canon of universal wisdom: “You can’t step into the same river twice.”

True enough. The sun rises, the sun sets, and before it rises again, however placid the intervening hours may have seemed, nothing and nobody is exactly as it was the day before.

We’re a day older, a dollar richer or poorer, and, inconveniently enough, our planet a day closer to the exploding fireball it will inevitably become in the course of geologic time. (Whereupon all its parts will change into something else.)

Out of all this comes a synthesis: new knowledge, insights, accommodations and compromises that come together in a fresh and life-giving new reality that honors humans’ dual needs for both tradition/securi...