Comment Magazine

10/13/2026

“If you take hell seriously, it can lift a critical burden from your politics. Suddenly, the next election does not need to fulfill all your hopes and dreams.”

Shadi Hamid and Matthew Kaemingk on hell and the limits of politics, from their new book.

Politics is better off if damnation is religion’s job.

10/13/2026

“In an America without God, we haven’t destroyed damnation; we’ve secularized it.”

Matthew Kaemingk and Shadi Hamid on damnation in a secular age, from their new book.

Politics is better off if damnation is religion’s job.

10/08/2026

“The purpose of the kitchen was not, as I had feared, the ego of the chef or even the perfection of the food. It was to nourish the guest, to honour the fleeting evening, and to bear witness to a life that is at once sensuous and sacred.”

Gregory Thompson on cooking, hospitality, and the life of the table.

The Menu, The Bear, and a choice.

10/08/2026

“Our primary concern was parenting, not policy, but I felt like I was having to block my daughter from running down a very dark road the government was trying to clear for her.”

W.R. Thomsen on a daughter’s depression and MAiD for mental illness.

A father wrestles with his daughter's depression and the Canadian government's MAiD policy.

10/08/2026

“The controlled world is an unresponsive world, and the person who controls it has made themselves unreachable by it.”

Gregory Thompson on control, communion, and the kitchen.

The Menu, The Bear, and a choice.

10/07/2026

What does it take to create a shared home in a divided city?

Elizabeth Oldfield talks with Riman Barakat and Karen Brunwasser, co-founders of an Israeli-Palestinian arts centre in Jerusalem.

Elizabeth Oldfield meets the Israeli and Palestinian women behind FeelBeit, an arts centre in Jerusalem. What can art hold together?

10/07/2026

10/05/2026

“I’m not sure such ‘arguments’ about literature can be won. They need to be lived out.”

Doug Sikkema on reading Wendell Berry.

Wendell Berry's influence is best measured by those who changed their lives because of his work.

10/05/2026

“Art awakens fleeting moments in which the world feels responsive rather than mute.”

Arthur Aghajanian on aesthetic experience and the mystical tradition.

The ways in which the art that uses chance and unpredictability teaches us about control.

10/01/2026

“If modernity seeks fulfillment through grasping, optimization, control, and consumption, Christian contemplation proposes a radical alternative. Its practice teaches that meaning emerges not through mastering the world but through learning to be addressed by it in the name of God.”

The ways in which the art that uses chance and unpredictability teaches us about control.