Voices
Nathan Beacom writes from Chicago. His writing has previously appeared in Plough Quarterly, Comment Magazine and elsewhere.
Politics & SocietyShort Take
A “chosen family” has its benefits, but it can also be a way of avoiding the accountability and personal growth found in long-term, committed, familial bonds.
Arts & CultureBooks
David McPherson's new book on the importance of placing limitations on our ambitions and desires touches on existential, political, moral and economic questions.
Arts & CultureBooks
In her new book, Uprooted, Grace Olmstead investigates the social and personal costs of shopping for a place to live the way we shop for cars.
Politics & SocietyShort Take
As rural America becomes more diverse, it faces many of the problems associated with big cities, writes Nathan Beacom. The urban-rural divide in our politics does not reflect reality.
Politics & SocietyShort Take
In “Laudato Si’,” Pope Francis called drinkable water a human right. But as Nathan Beacom writes, our methods of farming and raising livestock are degrading our soil and polluting our waterways.
Politics & SocietyShort Take
The current opioid crisis has strong parallels to drug addiction in Victorian England, writes Nathan Beacom, and the struggles of the Catholic poet Francis Thompson.
Politics & SocietyShort Take
This spring’s floods devastated farming and rural communities in the middle of the U.S. that were already struggling with economic and social decline, writes Nathan Beacom. But ”blue” America may find it difficult to sympathize.
Politics & SocietyShort Take
The latest five-year farm bill continues a pattern of subsidizing corporations while squeezing every last drop of use out of farm families and cropland.
Politics & SocietyShort Take
Preserving wilderness areas is a way to preserve the idea of the sacred. But the Trump administration is seeking a huge reduction in protected land.
Politics & SocietyShort Take
All those who eat are called to care about the plight of those whose work produced the eating.