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Winter 2017 |Volume 35, Issue 4

Ancient Friendships

This issue is dedicated to ancient friendships that can become the distant, orienting stars by which we navigate the roiling waves of twenty-four-hour news with all its upheavals and outrage. Think of this issue of Comment as your sextant (or, if you prefer to update the metaphor, a GPS device): we want to introduce you to a constellation of forgotten voices that have oriented thoughtful Christians across the centuries and who continue to offer wisdom to our age, if we’ll listen.

14 Articles In this Issue
02
Editorial: Finding Forgotten Friends byJames K.A. Smith

Apprenticing Ourselves to the Past

06
World View byJames K.A. Smith

An annotated reading of your world.

11
Headquarters: Ross and Davis Mitchell Prize for Faith and Writing byDoug Sikkema

Updates from Cardus on the renewal of social architecture.

12
To Knock a Chip out of the Wall: Sophie Scholl byKaren Wright Marsh

Learning from Sophie Scholl in Charlottesville.

18
The Uses of Friendships: Moses Mendelssohn byYuval Levin

It's when we resist conforming to the expectations of our contemporaries that we are a gift to them.

23
A Society of Friends: David Elton Trueblood byMack McCarter

David Elton Trueblood was a friend to the world and a friend to me.

27
Seeing the Beauty of Dappled Things: Gerard Manley Hopkins byRaymond C. Barfield

A poet taught a physician how to see again.

33
A Vocational Friendship: The Cappadocians bySusan R. Holman

How a letter to John Stott encouraged my journey to fourth-century Cappadocia.

38
At the Bottom of the World is the Word: Martin Luther byMichael Laffin

Learning to taste the Word of God with Martin Luther.

42
Learning to Be Free: Booker T. Washington byGeorge Sanker

What someone who was enslaved can teach us about a liberal education.

48
Making Sense of Our Contradictions: Blaise Pascal byRichard V. Horner

Blaise Pascal knows us well: as glorious and wretched, hungering for God but prone to distraction.

52
The Friend We Need but Do Not Want: Martin Luther King Jr. byGregory Thompson

On the inconvenience of Martin Luther King Jr.

57
The Story About Religious Freedom You Haven't Heard byNicholas Wolterstorff

The Christian origin of religious-freedom arguments.

64
The Commons: Resist the Tyrannical Now byJohn Wilson

Seeing the invisible at church or a used bookstore.

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