On American Exceptionalism
“Democrats are trying to reclaim American exceptionalism. Will it work?,” The Washington Post (January 5, 2021).
“White Evangelicals and the New American Exceptionalism of Donald Trump,” Religion and Politics (September 29, 2020).
“Dangerous Christian Nationalism? A conversation between Abram Van Engen and Os Guinness,” Patheos (August 20, 2020).
“Os Guinness, Eric Metaxas, and Their Dangerous Myths of American History,” Patheos (July 23, 2020).
“‘City on a Hill’ and the Making of an American Origin Story,” Religion & Politics (February 18, 2020).
“How America Became ‘A City Upon a Hill,’” Humanities: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities 41.1 (Winter 2020).
“What Does Thanksgiving Have to Do with the Impeachment Hearings?” LARB (November 28, 2019).
“Painting New Pictures,” Center for the Humanities (February 26, 2018).
“American Exceptionalism and America First,” Religion & Politics (January 19, 2018).
“Reagan called America a ‘city on a hill’ because taxpayers funded the humanities,” The Conversation (March 16, 2017), republished in Salon. Another version of this op-ed was republished in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch as “Saving History” (May 11, 2016).
“Clinton’s American exceptionalism puts a new twist on an old idea,” The Conversation (September 7, 2016).
Review Essays Online
“Fear, Anger, and Finding Another Way,” review of Martha Nussbaum, The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis (Simon and Schuster, 2018), Comment (Oct. 24, 2018).
“The Law and the Gospel,” review of Baird Tipson, Hartford Puritanism: Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and Their Terrifying God (Oxford UP, 2015), Common-Place 17.3.5 (Summer, 2017).
“Legacies,” forum response to Kathleen Donegan, Seasons of Misery: Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in Early America (U of Pennsylvania P, 2014), Common-Place 15.2 (Winter 2015).
“The Good, the Bad, and the Puritans,” review of Sarah Vowell, The Wordy Shipmates (Riverhead, 2008), in Books&Culture (2008).
“Teaching Life, with Restraint,” review of Stanley Fish, Save the World on Your Own Time (Oxford UP, 2008), in Books&Culture (2008).
On Poetry
“Poetry and the Art of Naming,” Reformed Journal (June 6, 2022).
“Poetry for All,” Center for the Humanities (September 15, 2020).
“Poetry’s Mad Instead,” Reformed Journal (September 13, 2021).
“Doing Theology with Poetry,” Dappled Things (Summer 2022).
Other Public Writings
“Generosity For Our Own Good,” Anxious Bench (November 19, 2020).
“In Praise of Classrooms,” Avidly / LA Review of Books (May 2020), co-written with Peter Boumgarden.
“Painting New Pictures,” Center for the Humanities (February 26, 2018).
“Advancing God’s Kingdom: Calvinism, Calvin College, and Betsy DeVos,” Religion and Politics (January 30, 2017).
“Freedom and/of/from Guns,” Avidly / LA Review of Books (October 11, 2016).
“Dispatches from Paternity Leave,” Avidly / LA Review of Books (November and December 2013). (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).
Carver Connections
“Answering the Why” (March 2, 2022).
“The Just Man Justices” (April 28, 2021).
“A Small Good Thing” (March 29, 2021).
“Made for Fellowship” (May 22, 2020).
“A Gathering of Stories” (April 30, 2020).
“Abide With Me” (April 24, 2020).
“Maundy Thursday Memorial” (April 9, 2020).
“Lost and Found” (March 30, 2020).
“Stand and Wait” (March 23, 2020).