Weekly Digest: The Negative World Comes for the Rosary

Welcome to my weekly digest for August 19, 2022.

For new subscribers, this contains a roundup of my recent writings and podcasts, as well as links to the best articles from around the web this week. You can control what emails you get from me by visiting your account page.

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The Rosary Is an Extremist Symbol?

The core thesis of my three worlds model is that the post-2014 era, we’ve entered what I call the “negative world” in which elite, official culture views Christianity negatively. Here’s a recent headline in the Atlantic that illustrates this transition.

The Atlantic changed the headline after an uproar over this, but increasingly this is what they really think. Expect to see people in secular society become increasingly comfortable making these kinds of statements.

Upcoming Events

I’m speaking at a number of events in the next few weeks if one is in a city near you.

9/1-9/3 At the County Before Country conference in Batavia, Ohio (Greater Cincinnati)

9/8 At the Ambrose School in Boise, ID. There’s no website online for this event but if you’re in Boise and interested, email me and I’ll get you the details.

9/9-10 At the Negative World Conference in Battle Ground, WA (Greater Portland)

9/13 At the National Conservatism 3 conference in Miami.

New Content and Media Mentions

I got nice mentions this week from Doug Wilson and Rod Dreher.

The American Principles Project asked me to contribute a short piece about President Biden to their family threats project. I don’t think Biden per se is family threat, but his underlings certainly are, as we saw with the DOJ coordinating with external parties and people in the White House to brand concerned parents as criminals.

New this week:

• In case you missed it, this month’s newsletter is a guest essay from Benjamin Mabry on anti-managerial aesthetics.

• I also had a nice interview with Mabry on the subject for my podcast. Subscribers can read the transcript.

• I wrote about the role of managerial aesthetics in the unbearable sameness of “local” businesses across the country.

• At American Reformer, Graham Shearer writes about a politics of divine perfection.

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Best of the Web

Bridget Phetasy: I Regret Being A Slut - A provocative title, but a reflective story of regret. Not from a Christian perspective but interesting.

I know regretting most of my sexual encounters is not something a sex-positive feminist who used to write a column for Playboy is supposed to admit. And for years, I didn’t. Let me be clear, being a “slut” and sleeping with a lot of men is not the only behavior I regret. Even more damaging was what I told myself in order to justify the fact that I was disposable to these men: I told myself I didn’t care.

I didn’t care when a man ghosted me. I didn’t care when he left in the middle of the night or hinted that he wanted me to leave. The walks of shame. The blackouts. The anxiety.

The lie I told myself for decades was: I’m not in pain—I’m empowered.

The American Conservative: How women get men to heaven - I know that authors don’t pick their own headlines, but this a great example of how some American Christians almost literally worship women.

Here’s a recent lecture from Dr. Robert Godfrey on Abraham Kuyper and Christian politics in the 21st century.