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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment
@commentmagazine.bsky.social
120 followers 290 following 370 posts
A magazine of public theology. Pull up a chair to our long and unruly banquet table. Learn more at comment.org/subscribe.
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 4d
“My psychedelic use and embrace of new age and yogic philosophy also didn’t have a category or means of understanding suffering, either my own or in the world.”
Decoy Enlightenment
Psychedelics are promoted as a gateway to spiritual experience and enlightenment, but Ashley Lande, a former enthusiast, believes they are a roadblock.
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 4d
“Who’s to say all the churchgoing and Bible reading isn’t just a way to get close to industry power brokers? Maybe the piety is merely strategic and will fizzle once the funds are extracted.”
Revival Among the Techies
Many in Silicon Valley are turning to Christianity. Is it just the next spiritual craze, or is genuine revival happening?
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 4d
“Holy dissidence is not always shouted in the streets. Sometimes, it whispers in the stillness of policy rooms or in the courage of unlikely heroes. Other times, it lingers in the refusal to abandon language, even—perhaps especially—when language falters.”
Negotiating the Invisible
The Fujimuras review "Kyoto," a play that shows the complexities and complicities of climate policy.
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 5d
“There’s energy here, but is there revival? It depends on what happens once the parking lot empties and the worshippers fly home.”

Kate Lucky on revival in Silicon Valley.
Revival Among the Techies
Many in Silicon Valley are turning to Christianity. Is it just the next spiritual craze, or is genuine revival happening?
comment.org
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 5d
“This is the invitation of holy dissidence: to become stewards, not warriors.”

@iamfujimura.bsky.social and Haejin Shim Fujimura on “Kyoto” and the art of beholding.
Negotiating the Invisible
The Fujimuras review "Kyoto," a play that shows the complexities and complicities of climate policy.
comment.org
1
commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 11d
“God is deeply involved in creation. He does not simply leave the sequence of evil to progress endlessly, does not let evil “work itself out,” but responds by creating a new sequence, that of salvation.”
Sequences of Sin
The depiction of evil in Robert Bresson's film "L'Argent" displays surprising resonance with Gregory of Nyssa's understanding of sin.
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 11d
“For Patočka, the life in truth is a political life: it is forged in times of uncertainty, when assumptions about the nature of what is and what is possible come undone, so that the question of what we want our lives to be like is raised anew, or perhaps for the first time.”
All Things Come to Be Through Strife
The thought of Czech dissident philosopher Jan Patočka represents a bold way of maintaining openness to the truth, whatever the cost.
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 11d
“I confess I have wondered whether, despite its restless and self-assured energy, my dissidence might at times be masking a deeper conformity. That I, rather than standing meaningfully apart from our great civilizational bar fight, might actually be simply one more participant in it.”
The Table of Dissent
Gregory Thompson explores Christian dissidence in the forms of contemplation, criticism, and conviviality.
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 11d
What role should the church play in addressing starvation and deadly illness?

Eric Ha, CEO of Medical Teams International, reflects on the decline of US foreign aid, the limitations of humanitarian response, and the need for churches to reclaim their historic role in caring for the vulnerable.
Humanitarian Health Care
Millions of people today face dire medical and mental health challenges. What role should the church play in foreign humanitarian aid to address starvation and deadly illness? In this episode, Eric…
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 12d
Kate Schmidgall shares a photo essay with stories written for the weary—vignettes of holy dissidence in Washington, DC.

Meet Jonathan Tate of Food on the Stove, Steve and Mary Park of Little Lights, and others making shalom visible in their communities.
The Sifted
Portraits of steadfast conviction.
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 12d
“Is there a populism of solidarity? A populism that is not polarizing but pluralistic—that brings people together across divides instead of further dividing?”

Amber Lapp travelled to Spruce Pine, North Carolina, to find out.
comment.org/a-populism-o...
A Populism of Solidarity
Amber Lapp attends the Rural Revival Festival and finds hope for a populism that brings people together rather than dividing them.
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 13d
“If we are to learn to speak a common language of virtue once more, we will need to better understand the workings of shame in and through our societies.”
A Virtue Divided
Public shame is an unreliable motivator for good, and when we relieve our own collective shame by placing blame rather than sharing it, it creates defiant blowback.
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 13d
“Our sense of value is durable when it can be described as only loosely correlated with social approval, achievement, or adulation as well as failure, ridicule, or disappointment.”
The Search for a Durable Identity
What is our true self? Where do we find identity? Kevin Brown argues that what we seek in identity is durability, roots, and obligation.
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 13d
“We don’t control where psychedelics take us because we don’t control the spiritual forces that can and do work through them.”
Decoy Enlightenment
Psychedelics are promoted as a gateway to spiritual experience and enlightenment, but Ashley Lande, a former enthusiast, believes they are a roadblock.
comment.org
commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 13d
“For Capon, however, the world—the gratuitously teeming, verdant, and fructifying world—was neither a resource to be exploited nor a prison to be escaped, but a gift to be received with delight and lifted up with joy.”
The Table of Dissent
Gregory Thompson explores Christian dissidence in the forms of contemplation, criticism, and conviviality.
comment.org
1
commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 13d
“While the virtuous ones may be asked to serve, they must be willing to follow Christ to the cross if needed, to relinquish power rather than injure their integrity.”
Live Not by Lies Even When You’re Winning
Christians and social conservatives may worry about groupthink and coercion when the Left is in power. What concerns remain when things change?
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 19d
“I hesitate to use the term “psychedelic” in any kind of a positive way, yet I’ve had the thought that birth is psychedelic in a way that the “best” trip can only ever mimic, and very poorly.”
Decoy Enlightenment
Psychedelics are promoted as a gateway to spiritual experience and enlightenment, but Ashley Lande, a former enthusiast, believes they are a roadblock.
comment.org
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 19d
“It’s difficult to be good and be in power, though not impossible. One must be content to “be obscurely good.” If the rest of the world values vice, then the good person must choose not to be their king.”

@hootenwilson.bsky.social on virtue and power.
comment.org/live-not-by-...
Live Not by Lies Even When You’re Winning
Christians and social conservatives may worry about groupthink and coercion when the Left is in power. What concerns remain when things change?
comment.org
1
commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 19d
“Because Baldwin believed that self-deceit lies at the heart of both personal and civilizational abuses of power, his dissidence took the form of a relentless commitment to telling the truth.”

Gregory Thompson on Christian dissidence in the forms of contemplation, criticism, and conviviality.
The Table of Dissent
Greg Thompson explores Christian dissidence in the forms of contemplation, criticism, and conviviality.
comment.org
1
commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 21d
“The externalization and weaponization of shame for social transformation is a recipe for social splintering, not solidarity.”
A Virtue Divided
Public shame is an unreliable motivator for good, and when we relieve our own collective shame by placing blame rather than sharing it, it creates defiant blowback.
comment.org
commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 21d
“Perhaps the desire to liberate the self from situational commitments is not so much emancipatory as it is an act of uprootedness, making us susceptible to isolation and fragility.”
The Search for a Durable Identity
What is our true self? Where do we find identity? Kevin Brown argues that what we seek in identity is durability, roots, and obligation.
comment.org
commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 21d
“Generic platitudes about embracing the dark and the light or claims that “the Universe will give you what you need” reveal their vapidity in the face of actual suffering.”
Decoy Enlightenment
Psychedelics are promoted as a gateway to spiritual experience and enlightenment, but Ashley Lande, a former enthusiast, believes they are a roadblock.
comment.org
Reposted by Comment
millinerd.bsky.social
millinerd.bsky.social @millinerd.bsky.social · 21d
Intro to this month’s Material Mysticism at @commentmagazine.bsky.social : millinerd.substack.com/p/just-say-no
Just Say No
Drugs, demons and the limits of "radical pragmatism," being an introduction to the September Material Mysticism
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commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 21d
“I think people are perhaps slowly realizing that psychedelics simply cannot deliver on the promises their proponents aver, and a gradual disillusionment is taking place.”

@millinerd.bsky.social interviews Ashley Lande on psychedelics and Christianity.
Decoy Enlightenment
Psychedelics are promoted as a gateway to spiritual experience and enlightenment, but Ashley Lande, a former enthusiast, believes they are a roadblock.
comment.org
1 2
commentmagazine.bsky.social
Comment @commentmagazine.bsky.social · 25d
“Social responsibilities are anathema to modernism’s penchant for an unencumbered self that associates liberty with a lack of restraint and an expansion of choice.”
The Search for a Durable Identity
What is our true self? Where do we find identity? Kevin Brown argues that what we seek in identity is durability, roots, and obligation.
comment.org
1