Read it all.

As an African American parent, Cassandre Dunbar in Charlotte, North Carolina, always knew she and her husband would have “the talk” with their son, the one preparing him for interactions with law enforcement.

But she never dreamed it would be necessary at 5 years old.

“I thought the cops were supposed to help us? Are they only helpful to white people?” he asked after taking in TV coverage of protests and overhearing his parents discuss the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor.

Ms. Dunbar explained to her eldest child: “Some people have a hard time understanding that skin color doesn’t have anything to do with what kind of person you are. I said that, yes, cops are meant to help us all, but some cops aren’t good cops and the bad ones really aren’t helpful to people who look like us.”

Many parents of all races are struggling with similar conversations after a week of outrage and sadness that spilled into streets worldwide after video of Mr. Floyd’s death emerged. It came after months of family togetherness in coronavirus lockdown, a time when kids have been cut off from schools and peers.

Read it all.

Research suggests children as young as two begin internalizing racist ideas. Amid the unrest around protests, parents and educators are flocking to anti-racism literature to help navigate challenging conversations. https://t.co/z0S97jwRfL

— The Christian Science Monitor (@csmonitor) June 4, 2020

Four days after the Congolese government shut down Kinshasa’s pulsating nightlife, her husband knocked out some of her teeth and went to live with his mistress, leaving her bleeding and naked on the floor. Their three children saw it all.

A policy aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus meant that case K1B1 – whose name Reuters is withholding for her safety – had been locked down with her abuser.

“When Marie came to visit me I was still vomiting blood from the beatings,” she told Reuters, referring to Marie Lukasa, who set up Congo’s first domestic abuse hotline a year ago.

During the coronavirus crisis, it’s a service in increasing demand in a country ill-equipped to deal with such abuse.

Read it all.

Congo’s first domestic abuse hotline says demand for help has exploded during the #coronavirus crisis l #WomensRights https://t.co/JnP5RB52mm

— Thomson Reuters Foundation News (@TRF_Stories) May 26, 2020

The coronavirus has killed about 14,000 residents of nursing homes in France — half the country’s death toll. We are lucky that, so far, none of those deaths occurred at my grandparents’ home, where the caregivers have been vigilant about social distancing.

As France began easing its lockdown last week, we were finally able to visit, or rather sit outside the home, as my grandparents sat inside, a few feet away. To allow us to hear each other, the staff opened the door, but placed a table with a plexiglass partition in the doorway.

We could see my grandparents only one at a time, since they are in different parts of the home that can no longer mix socially. My grandfather, a former stone mason, misses many things that we cannot yet deliver, like shorts, because of the home’s strict rules. But it is my grandmother’s company that he misses most.

Read it all.

“As France began easing its lockdown last week, we were finally able to visit, with limits. To allow us to hear each other, the staff opened the door, but placed a table with a plexiglass partition in the doorway.” https://t.co/3f1HBg9RUJ by @ElianPeltier

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) May 26, 2020

For the fifth year in a row, the number of babies born in the United States has declined. It’s the lowest number of births — just under 3.75 million in 2019, gleaned from birth certificate data — since 1985, according to the report published online May 20 from the National Center for Health Statistics. Since 2014, that number has been dropping 1 percent on average per year.

There’s been a general downward trend in births since the Great Recession, which lasted from 2007 to 2009. In periods of economic uncertainty, births tend to drop, says family demographer Karen Benjamin Guzzo of Bowling Green State University in Ohio. But rather than rebounding after the recession ended, as would be expected, births have continued to fall. It’s an indication that not everyone’s prospects improved as the economy recovered, she says.

People like to feel certain about their coming years before they have children, says Guzzo, who was not involved in the new report. But many younger adults struggle with student loan debt, face soaring home prices and hold jobs that lack health benefits or sick days, she says. Considering the costs for childcare and providing for their children’s education on top of that leads some people to question whether they can afford to be a good parent.

“When the economy sort of writ large looks good,” Guzzo says, “it doesn’t necessarily mean it looks good for individuals and particularly for younger folks in their child bearing years.” Even if young people are working, she says, “they’re just not in a place where they feel confident in their future.”

Read it all.

“This is all pre-COVID, so you can imagine this [uncertainty] is only going to get worse.” https://t.co/lTJoRx3bGd

— Science News (@ScienceNews) May 20, 2020

China may cover much of the cost of childcare, from birth to college graduation, to help reverse a decline in the birthrate.

In advance of the National People’s Congress, the rubberstamp legislature that convenes on Friday in Beijing, an influential policy advisory body has suggested that wide-ranging financial support be offered to families to address the falling birthrate in the world’s most populous country, including providing income tax cuts for new parents.

“In recent years the birthrates have plummeted, and the subsequent social and economic problems have become more severe by the day,” the China Democratic League said. It is proposing a series of subsidies to help with childcare costs and even payments to grandparents so they are rewarded for helping young parents to look after their offspring.

Read it all (subscription).

China may cover much of the cost of childcare, from birth to college graduation, to help reverse a decline in the birthrate https://t.co/NVg4YFooLz

— The Times (@thetimes) May 19, 2020

“The most important thing in my world at this point is spending time loving and laughing,” he said. “Just living life to the fullest and loving every moment.”

Chase is taking the time to tell his story because he wants to touch people and spread what he has learned through his cancer journey.

“The precious people in your life, the amount of time they are in your life, take every moment you have. Enjoy and give everything you can in those relationships,” he said. “And know there is so much possible with love when your love includes God.”

Read it all.

Chase’s life may end up being shorter than others. But that’s not yet a given. He is not discouraged. And he has not been shortchanged. Not many people, after all, find their Sadie. https://t.co/ygBImzJY3U via @indystar

— Dana HunsingerBenbow (@DanaBenbow) May 15, 2020

[Dimitri ] Christakis says the serious effects of this crisis on children like Phoebe have been overlooked.

“The decision to close schools initially, and now to potentially keep them closed, isn’t, I think, taking the full measure of the impact this is going to have on children,” he told NPR. “Not just the short term, but the long term.”

The problem, Christakis says, isn’t just learning loss, which is expected to fall particularly hard on low-income children with unequal access to distance learning. Recent research from a large testing association on the “COVID-19 slide” suggests children may return in the fall having made almost a third less progress in reading, and half as much progress in math, compared with what they would have in a typical school year.

Mental health and social-emotional development, Christakis argues, have been less discussed: “The social-emotional needs of children to connect with other children in real time and space, whether it’s for physical activity, unstructured play or structured play, this is immensely important for young children in particular.” A new study in JAMA Pediatrics, he says, documents elevated depression and anxiety among children under lockdown in China.

A third major risk, says Christakis, is child abuse.

Read it all.

Nightmares. Tantrums. Grief. Violent outbursts. Even suicidal thoughts.

Parents across the country shared their concerns with NPR — worried that their young children’s mental health is suffering amid the coronavirus crisis and school closures.https://t.co/YPcUmf3nHD

— NPR (@NPR) May 14, 2020

Bishop Steve Wood was released from the hospital following 10 days on a ventilator amidst treatment for COVID-19. An otherwise healthy man in his 50s who had not before been hospitalized, Wood is far from the image of elderly or medically compromised patients we regularly read about in the news.

The rector of St. Andrew’s Church and bishop for the Anglican Diocese of the Carolinas shares with the Institute on Religion & Democracy’s Jeff Walton about what sustained him during a period of intensive care, ongoing recovery and God bringing “beauty from ashes.”

Take the time to watch it all (just under 18 minutes).

“I don’t believe that God promises to spare his people from these kinds of things,” @revstevewood says after 10 days on a ventilator. “Paul tells us in Romans that God’s ways are inscrutable … there are times when we have experiences of severe mercy” https://t.co/lluClj8ise

— Jeff Walton (@jeffreyhwalton) May 11, 2020

Read it all.

Wow there is so much I am unaware of.

Utah Lowers Penalty for Polygamy, No Longer a Felony https://t.co/O4BhBegyZo

— Savi🌳 (@SavitriGrover) May 14, 2020

So it was coronavirus that killed her. It wasn’t her “underlying conditions”. Prior to her diagnosis, she hadn’t been in hospital for 18 months – an unusually care-free period for Karina. No, it was a virulent, aggressive and still only partially understood virus that was responsible, a virus that is causing thousands of people, despite the unstinting bravery of the medical staff of this country, to say a distanced goodbye to relatives who would still be alive had they not contracted it.

No one could describe Karina as weak: she did not have it coming, she was no more disposable than anyone else. Her death was not inevitable, does not ease our burden, is not a blessing. She was vulnerable, yes. She needed the care of others to live. I will remain for ever grateful to the hundreds of caregivers who have, at one point or another, looked after her with such kindness and dedication, some of whom have maintained a relationship with her long after their retirement. Grateful too to live in a country that makes provisions of care free to all, no matter one’s need, however stretched and fraying their chronic underfunding increasingly makes them.

But this disease is not just killing people who would have died soon anyway. It is making the lives of those most in need of our care and compassion even harder, even more fearful. And if there is anything that I hope might come from Karina’s death, from the tens of thousands of other deaths caused by this disease and its insidious spread, it is that as a country, from government both national and local, we might make our focus the easing of those lives in the future.

Read it all.

‘Her death was not inevitable, does not ease our burden, is not a blessing.’ Magnificent from Rory Kinnear https://t.co/FNYX0j4JMW

— Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) May 12, 2020

With life on hold for the past few months, Chelsea Hamshaw’s plowing through the monotony one song at a time.

And she’s sharing her music on social media in the hope it provides a little therapy for friends, family and her community as the world faces such strange times.

“It’s a way I can communicate and share what’s on my heart,” Hamshaw said. “My music enables me to do that, and that’s why it’s so important to me.”

Hamshaw was born in Pittsburgh, where her father served as a minister. The family later moved to Bakersfield, California. After college, Hamshaw sensed a call to move to South Carolina, which is where she met her husband, Jason, who at the time was the youth minister at Prince George Church in Georgetown. The two married in 2010 and are now the parents of four boys.

Read it all.

Florence #SouthCarolina Chelsea Hamshaw musician shares what’s on her heart by singing out https://t.co/3nFvsRsY5m #music #anglican

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) May 5, 2020

Around 60,000 families forced onto Universal Credit by Covid-19 could have essential support restricted by the government’s hated ‘two-child limit’.

Families who have to claim the benefit because of job losses and illness will find they are denied support for more than two children.

Ministers have refused to scrap the policy, even temporarily during the coronavirus crisis….

A new report by the Church of England and Child Poverty Action Group said the virus crisis had exposed the injustice of the policy, which mostly hits working families.

Read it all.

60,000 families forced onto Universal Credit by coronavirus ‘to be hit’ by two child limithttps://t.co/RYQayoOmGK pic.twitter.com/yIytrcTJMd

— Mirror Politics (@MirrorPolitics) May 4, 2020

More than 20 million youths across the country attend day and overnight camps, generating more than $27 billion in revenue and providing 1.5 million jobs during the season, according to industry estimates.

At Sullivan’s Oconee County camp, registration is between $945 and $3,930 per child. But it’s hard for her and others in the industry to speak with certainty about what the summer might hold, as they await revised U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention protocols, expected to be released in May.

Sullivan said Camp Chatuga will make “month-to-month” decisions. Maybe sessions can be held in July only, or pushed into August, for instance.

“If it looks too much like it’s going to be a restriction on what camp is all about, that’s going to affect whatever decision we make too,” she said.

Read it all.

As the coronavirus maintains its grip on everyday life, overseers of summer camps around the state worry social distancing guidelines and other restrictions could hamper this year’s offerings.https://t.co/aT8hEHgc8W

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) April 27, 2020

Mr. Bello’s cataclysmic spiral from avid skier, cyclist and runner to grievously ill patient — and the heartbreaking and triumphant twists in doctors’ relentless efforts to save him — underscores the agonizing challenges confronting even highly trained physicians and well-equipped hospitals battling a ferociously capricious virus.

Hospitals have never before had, simultaneously, so many patients so sick that their lungs have basically stopped functioning. And while doctors are experienced at treating similar respiratory failure, the path of patients with Covid-19 can be maddeningly unpredictable.

“It’s like they fall off a cliff,” said Dr. Peggy Lai, a critical care doctor at Mass General. “You see young patients getting sicker and sicker by the day despite everything that you know is good standard of care.”

Without proven therapies to extinguish the infection, doctors ride roller-coasters of trial and error. They weigh risks of uncertain treatments and painstakingly adjust machines in hopes of shoring up patients’ lungs enough that their bodies clear the inflammation and heal.

“The tricky part with this disease,” Dr. Lai said, “is that we have nothing to follow, to know what predicts how sick someone will be and what predicts them getting better.”

Read it all.

A man went from athletic and healthy to gravely ill. The twists in doctors’ efforts to save him highlight the agonizing mysteries of the coronavirus.https://t.co/TgPmXDhBaa

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 26, 2020

In consultation with Bishop Lawrence and the Wardens, we agreed to delay the announcement while so much was unknown. Although our current situation still has many question marks, the initial shock of COVID-19 has past, and it remains uncertain when we shall re-gather. Again, in consultation with wise counsel, I have decided to invite you into
the midst of this journey we are on as a family. We would appreciate your love and prayers as we walk into a new season with plenty of unknowns.

If you have limited experience with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) as I did, you should know that Parkinson’s is a neuron-condition which affects the brains dopamine-producing cells. Thislack of dopamine causes a myriad of fairly unpredictable symptoms in the bodies of those afflicted. PD is a “snowflake disease” with no set pattern of symptoms and no known cause or cure. Statistically, I am slightly young to have PD with the average age of onset being 55.Because of the advances in treatment, PD does not generally shorten one’s lifespan.

My prognosis in the near term (10 years+) is good. I have been on a medicine and exercise regimen since January that has produced some very good results….

Read it all.

The Rector of Saint Helena’s, Beaufort, writes the parish he serves about his medical situation https://t.co/GBYCr513hf #parishministry #family #marriage #children #health #southcarolina #anglican pic.twitter.com/sbyZyDT4Ka

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) April 23, 2020

Early on, the medical team told Jacqui that her husband might be on the ventilator three to five days. But so much about this new virus remained unknown. They consulted with doctors across the country and across the state.

As Wood approached his first week on the ventilator, his medical team wanted to try removing him from it. His X-rays looked better, his oxygen saturation improved.

But his body could not handle breathing on its own.

More time, more loneliness, more fear. Jacqui saw on the news that the average COVID-19 patient was staying on a ventilator closer to eight to 11 days. She figured that if he went more than 11 days, she’d panic more.

On day 10, a Monday, his doctor tried again to wean him.

This time, his lungs responded. He no longer needed the ventilator.

His overnight nurse got him out of bed and into a chair. The nurse took a picture around 4 a.m. and texted it to Jacqui.

The next day, his nurse called Jacqui on FaceTime so she could see her husband. Wood could barely get his hand to his mouth. His throat was too raw to speak. But he could answer yes and no.

He was in there. He would be OK. They would all be OK.

Read it all.

Bishop Steve Wood was on a ventilator, fighting COVID-19, for 10 days.

And lived to realize it.https://t.co/dPbeT3fUYy

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) April 19, 2020

Twelve doctors at her hospital and the chief executive were sickened with the coronavirus. A colleague had died. Patients as young as 19 were being placed on ventilators.

But Michele Acito, the director of nursing at Holy Name Medical Center, in the hardest-hit town in New Jersey’s hardest-hit county, felt like she was holding up.

Then her mother-in-law, sister-in-law and brother-in-law arrived.

The disease that has crippled New York City is now enveloping New Jersey’s densely packed cities and suburbs. The state’s governor said on Friday that New Jersey was about a week behind New York, where scenes of panicked doctors have gripped the nation.

Hospitals in the state are scrambling to convert cafeterias and pediatric wings into intensive care units. Ventilators are running low. One in three nursing homes has at least one resident with the virus.

Read it all.

12 doctors and the chief executive of the New Jersey hospital where Michele Acito works contracted the coronavirus. A colleague died. Ms. Acito was still holding it together, then her mother-in-law, sister-in-law and brother-in-law became ill. https://t.co/oCtC5cKCpy

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 5, 2020

We both wear disposable gloves. I put my hand through the crook of his arm, and we slowly start for the clinic. The day before was one of the harder ones, with T lightheaded and nauseated most of the day, eating only if I spoon-fed him, coughing more and using his albuterol inhaler more, then coughing more again. He was soaked in sweat in the morning and by evening was lying curled up, looking apprehensive. “I coughed up blood just now,” he told me quietly.

We talked to his doctor on speakerphone. “We are all kind of working blind,” he told us. Many patients, he said, seem to begin to feel better after a week. But others, the more serious and severe cases, take a downturn, and the risks rise as the virus targets the lungs. Pneumonia is a common next step in that downward progression. We read about it in the patients admitted to the hospital. Now the doctor called in a prescription for antibiotics to the CVS pharmacy that would close in less than an hour. I texted T’s friend down the block, and he texted back that he would pick up the medicine. I asked if he would get oranges too; T has been accepting a little fresh-squeezed juice or cut-up pieces, and we were down to one last orange. They suddenly seemed an unimaginably exotic treat.

The doctor told us to go back to the clinic for a chest X-ray first thing in the morning. Now we slowly walk the three blocks, T coughing behind his mask. As we move along the street, we see some other people too — fewer than a few days ago, before Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed New Yorkers to stay indoors as much as possible. Some joggers go by. Just over a week ago, that was still me. Now I point out the buds about to bloom on the branches we pass, drawing T’s attention away from the few passers-by so we won’t see if they start or turn around. A few are wearing their own masks, but they are walking upright, striding along, using them as protection for themselves. Not like us….

Read it all.

I wrote about my family’s experience over the past two weeks as my husband has been seriously sickened by the coronavirus. This was not easy to write, but I had to: https://t.co/flNUY63O6v

— Jessica Lustig (@jessicalustig) March 24, 2020

Losing a parent is always difficult, especially as important financial and religious arrangements must be made during a time of intense grief. A global pandemic doesn’t help. But when my mother died on March 3, my family still had no idea how difficult it would be to stay safe while still honoring her in the Jewish tradition.

The Jewish response to death is communal. The local community comes together to support the mourners, who open up their home for a week of shiva. During this time the kaddish, or Jewish prayer for the dead, is recited at services three times a day. The mourner then may leave the home but remains obligated to say the kaddish three times daily for 11 months. According to Jewish law, these obligations must be fulfilled in the presence of a minyan, or prayer quorum of 10 men over the age of 13.

The current coronavirus crisis creates a challenge for those wishing to adhere to these Jewish mourning customs, especially in light of Judaism’s prioritization of public and individual health over ritual obligation. In Maryland, where I live, synagogues closed their doors last weekend to services and other community activities. In New Jersey, communities could not have communal prayer services in the home or even outdoors. In the interest of safety, similar changes are occurring throughout the country.

Read it all.

“A Minyan in the Time of Social Distancing.” Very moving article by @TeviTroy in @WSJ. https://t.co/Dlp2K15GMJ

— Jonathan Horn (@JonathanDHorn) March 20, 2020

In the New Testament we learn from Jesus that those who live in this new creation ‘neither marry nor are given in n marriage, but are like angels in heaven’ ( Matthew 22: 30). This teaching by Jesus does not mean that we shall stop being male and female. As we learn from the example of Jesus, our resurrected bodies will retain the same sex that they have now. This means that if we are male or female now we shall be male or female then.

What this teaching does mean is that in the world to come marriage as we know it, involving sexual intercourse and the procreation of children, will be no more. The number of people God wills to inherit his new creation will have been brought into existence and because there will be no more death their number will not diminish. Hence there will be no need for procreative sex, hence there will be no more need for one flesh unions and hence marriage as it exists now will be no more.

However, this does not mean that marriage as such will cease to be. On the contrary, the New Testament tells us that at the centre of the life of the new creation there will be the ‘marriage of the Lamb’ (Revelation 19:6-9, 21: 2 & 9), the marriage between God and humanity that will endure for eternity.

This eternal marriage is the transcendent reality which marriage in this world foreshadows. In the words of Peter Kreeft; ‘The earthly intimacy with the beloved is a tiny, distant, spark of the bonfire that is the heavenly intimacy with God.’

Read it all.

I have just posted the sixth article in my basic Christian primer series. This article is on ‘Men, women and marriage in the life to come’ https://t.co/EGg4d2q9g5

Also take a look at what Luther says about living with a ‘deadly plague’ https://t.co/Vo6JweddDE

— Martin Davie (@MartinBDavie) March 16, 2020

Frustrated after a string of break-ups, Dwita Astari Pujiartati quit the casual romance circuit and turned to a growing trend among Indonesian singles — marriage without dating.

The 27-year-old professor exchanged resumes with prospective suitors — helped by a Muslim cleric-cum-matchmaker — until she was contacted by a long-lost acquaintance who also wanted to give contact-less dating a whirl.

There was no hand holding or kissing. The pair didn’t even meet in person for almost a year, chatting on the telephone instead.

“Once we felt ‘the click’, (my now husband) asked my parents if he could propose to me,” Pujiartati said.

The practice known as taaruf, or introduction, is derided by critics as old fashioned and more fitting to conservative Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia than relatively liberal Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim majority country.

But Pujiartati saw it as a way to ditch dating that went nowhere and be a devout Muslim at the same time by avoiding pre-marital touching and sex.

Read it all.

Indonesian singles propose ‘marriage without dating’ https://t.co/01lEndH0ws

— The Straits Times (@STcom) March 11, 2020

Collins said she hopes to one day open a center in Fisher’s name. After going through her daughter’s phone, she saw that she wanted to get help and was apparently only taking enough drugs to not go through withdrawal.

She wishes that her daughter would’ve told her about her addiction. She said she truly believes that through them working together and her love for her newborn baby, they could’ve gotten through it.

But she wants to make sure Fisher’s story gets out so that people don’t have to go through what she went through. Losing her daughter shattered her life, she said.

“I can’t stop going, but that pain will always be there with me,” she said. “You lose a child, you really do lose a piece of yourself.”

Read it all.

[The] Rev Tim Anderson was speaking after The News Letter broke the news last week that the Church and Society Commission – a body set up by the general synod – has come out in support of Northern Irish people who want to convert {same-sex] civil partnerships into fully-fledged marriages.

[The] Rev Anderson, who ministers in St Elizabeth’s, Dundonald, is Irish chairman of the conservative movement GAFCON (the Global Anglican Future Conference).

He stressed he was speaking in a personal capacity rather than as a spokesman for the whole Gafcon movement.

He blasted the commission’s stance, saying it “assumes that there is more than one legitimate definition of marriage – a secular definition and a religious one”.

Read it all.

Specifically the consultation (which ended on Sunday) asked the public for views on ensuring clergy are not forced to conduct…[same-sex] weddings.

One of the questions asked in the consultation was this: “Do you agree same-sex couples in NI should be permitted to convert their civil partnership to marriage?”

The reply of the CoI commission was: “Yes. If it has been decided to legalise same-sex marriage in a territory where such couples were previously only able to form civil partnerships it should be permitted for them to convert such a partnership to a marriage.”

This appears to be in radical conflict with the long-standing position of the church, which is essentially that…[same-sex] marriage is impossible by definition.

Read it all.

To be on the LLF Co-ordinating Group at the moment feels weird. We review and revise and re-edit the resources, on the basis of feedback from a wide range of people – more or less equally balanced between progressives and conservatives. We are working in the heat of the moment, and yet, because all is not yet ready for publication, we are working away from the public eye.

I think that what is emerging is something which just might do what Jeremy hopes it might. Films which tell real people’s stories, offered to us with vulnerability and trust, from across the spectrum. A book which opens up the variety of human relationships and understandings of sexuality and gender, recognising that we are, as a Church, in an unprecedented situation where there is a strong desire for unity but also deep questions about whether that must also require uniformity.

But I am so close to the process that I fear I may have lost my sense of perspective. And I know that the hinterland to which I am closest, the LBGTI+ community, is tired of waiting, tired of scraps from the table, tired of being fobbed off. LLF is a process; it will involve more talking, more listening, with a clear timetable for some decisions, but the timetable is not quick and any decisions to be made are far from being considered, let alone recommended. Meanwhile, opinion continues to change and more and more Christians accept the possibility of equal marriage.

Many people have said to me – ‘why can’t the Church just change? Why’s it all taking so long?’ To which my reply is that if we were a different Church, we could indeed have just changed a long time ago. If we were a Church made up only of progressive Christians, of people who are relaxed about the diversity of ways in which God created humans, then it would be easy to change. But we aren’t: we are a Church which includes many more conservative Christians, and many of us, including me, were brought to faith within those more conservative churches… and the eye cannot say to the hand, I do not need you.

Read it all.

Indeed, Douthat employs decadence as a diagnosis of “economic stagnation, institutional decay, and cultural and intellectual exhaustion at a high level of material prosperity and technological development.”

As expected, Douthat lays out his case with skill and nuance. The age of economic expansion that began with the Industrial Revolution and ended sometime before the end of the 20th century is over. We should have seen it coming, Douthat writes: “At some point, every advanced-for-its-time society has ceased advancing; there is no reason to assume that the modern world is inherently immune from the torpor that claimed the Ottomans and imperial China in the not-so-distant past.”

But decadence also comes with sterility, and Douthat’s chapter on falling birthrates around the world is the most authentically dystopian part of his argument and analysis. This dystopia comes with two fundamental facts—there will be fewer babies, and there will be many more old people. The problem for society is that babies use up a lot of resources for a time, but then they become net producers for a much longer time. When it comes to the aged, the costs may well be even higher at the end of life, but without the promise of future contributions. An aging society is a society winding down, and this entropy is spreading nation by nation. It is a spiritual crisis.

The fact that human beings are making fewer babies is a far deeper problem, spiritually speaking, than the fact that Hollywood is stuck in a cycle of sequels.

Beyond stagnation (mostly economic) and sterility and repetition, Douthat also points to sclerosis (mostly political). His commentary is both perceptive and also sobering. He sees our “once-effective political order becoming impervious to constructive change.” That is a hard argument to refute, and Douthat wisely refuses to argue that it’s a truly recent development. This sclerosis was a long time in the making, and few significant political forces are even interested in reversing the process.

Read it all.

The Decadent and the Damned? Ross Douthat’s Timely Vision of Western Civilization @TGC @DouthatNYT @albertmohler https://t.co/xUWv1KmWby

— Thomas S. Kidd (@ThomasSKidd) February 21, 2020

Each of Douthat’s “four horsemen of decadence”—economic stagnation, collective infertility, political sclerosis, and cultural repetition—represents structural choices to sacrifice the future for the present. Weak innovation is driven by selecting short-term returns over investment, and by a publish-or-perish paradigm that makes careers but not discoveries. Collapsing fertility rates reflect deferred childbearing, spending the future social and personal benefits of children to ensure individuals’ present stability. Sclerosis is produced by a political class that clings to its own power, at the cost of training a future elite. And cultural repetition is in large part a product of Hollywood playing it safe, churning out blockbuster pablum instead of investing in something that might fail.

In other words, what is meant by “decadence” is in part “risk-averseness.” Where once we dared to do impossible things in the hope of a better tomorrow, now we pour everything possible into simply preserving the status quo.

The book’s last section sees Douthat imagining ways we could break out of this feedback loop. Through three chapters, he considers a societal collapse driven by mass strife over immigration, a la Michel Houllebecq; a rising Africa driving “renaissance,” and a return either to the will to power through renewed space exploration, or the will to meaning through a religious revival.

Even in the case of catastrophe, Douthat seems to see such regime-shattering possibilities as fundamentally positive. The return of history, even in its worst forms, might be better than the eternal now. As writer Tara Isabella Burton put it in her own review, “What we need, Douthat implies, is a renewed eschatological vision of what history, and what we, are for [emphasis in original].” It is little surprise that among Douthat’s many positive reviewers is arch-techno-optimist Peter Thiel, who writes that, “If there is a problem with the book, it is that Douthat does not press his own theme [of returning to the future] urgently enough.”

For all the book’s many strengths, there is one question to which Douthat gives perhaps inadequate treatment: Why has decadence happened?

Read it all.

Review: Ross Douthat’s ‘The Decadent Society’ https://t.co/R9HGVGyLNf pic.twitter.com/YPOrVqu5fW

— Scott White (@sdwhite) March 1, 2020

Intersectionality is many things. It is a group of theories that join at the confluence of postmodern philosophy, poststructural social science, and critical cultural and legal studies. It is also a movement, which brings spokespeople for minority races, gender- and sexual-identity activists, and socialists together with a certain kind of feminist. And, as Warren’s quip illustrates, it is also a pose. It is a way for “woke” people to demonstrate their intellectual, social, and moral superiority over the unwoke.

The most essential tenet of Intersectionality is that nothing is essential. There is no essential human nature, nothing essential about reason or logic, no essential meaning of “man” or “woman” or “white” or “efficient” or “liberty” or “law.” At the deepest point in the Intersectionality pool, the very center of the confluence where all of its tributaries come together, everything is invented by those who hold power. Not only cultural norms and language, but also natural rights and duties, biological definitions, religious convictions, economic and scientific rules, and logic are all constructed “discursive practices.” Everything is a social construct, built by those who want to leverage their superior economic, cultural, or political positions to preserve their privileges and keep others down in the zero-sum contest for power.

This is one of two convictions that all Intersectionalists share in common. They are all, to varying degrees, against essence. They are all convinced that some term or feature that unenlightened people take for granted is both artificial and unjust. They do not always agree on which terms and features must be torn down. But they all share a motivation to tear down some aspect of the apparent essence of something.

Socialists and critical legal studies theorists focus on the constructs of “law” and “economics.” They teach our young people that “due process,” “price,” and “liberty” are suspect artifices imposed upon the poor by the rich. Critical race and dominance feminist theorists teach our young people to reject traditional notions of natural equality and equality before the law. Gender-identity and queer theorists go after the assumption that there can be anything essentially “masculine” or “feminine.” And so on.

The other conviction that all Intersectionalists share is that the most privileged people, who are responsible for the construction of most of the oppressive discursive practices, are heterosexual, white males.

Read it all.

Essences or Intersectionality: Understanding Why We Can’t Understand Each Otherhttps://t.co/b5BRZVWXAw

— Andrew T. Walker (@andrewtwalk) March 2, 2020