Another Life with Joy Marie Clarkson

At twenty weeks there were only two things I knew about my daughter, both of them scientifically derived facts: her physical abnormality and her biological sex. Read the article.

Victoria Reynolds Farmer on the Magnificat and how her disability taught her to trust a God who raises up the weak and brings down the mighty. Read it here.

Faced with a frightening diagnosis, a couple was hours away from an abortion when one conversation made them reconsider. Their daughter owes her life to a young man with Down syndrome. Read it here.

Peter and Susannah answer listener questions: How should we think about the so-called “social model” of disability? Why shouldn’t we abort children who may not live long? How can we talk about human worth with those who don’t share our Christian convictions? And are there any downsides to designing for disability? They also reflect on what they’ve learned in doing this issue. As it turns out, disa...

Peter and Susannah discuss Kelsey Osgood’s piece “Stranger in a Strange Land” with her, about her adult conversion to Orthodox Judaism and her family’s attempt to find a place where, practicing that faith, they can feel at home. Then, they speak with Leah Libresco Sargeant about her three most recent pieces for Plough: on dependence and illiberalism, on the question of whose bodies matter in our p...

Pete and Susannah speak with Emory bioethicist Rosemarie Garland-Thomson about her ongoing philosophical journey into bioethical questions, and her critique of market-and-autonomy based ideas about human worth. Might an ethic of caution, care, and doing no harm provide a path forward for disagreement about personhood in the case of abortion? They also discuss Denmark’s famed “eradication” of Down...

Susannah and Peter talk with O. Carter Snead about his book What it Means to be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics. They examine the question of the anthropology of expressive individualism as the framework for our current legal bioethical regime, and look at hot-button cultural issues including abortion, assisted reproduction, assisted suicide, and end-of-life care. How should we di...

Peter and Susannah discuss Aimee Murphy’s Rehumanize, an organization dedicated to a consistent life ethic, and the intersection between the pro-life movement and the disability rights movement. How does the utilitarian obsession with quality of life and rejection of those who suffer attack the dignity of all of us? And how can an awareness of the existence of sufferers pull us out of our own meri...

Peter and Susannah discuss Peter’s lead editorial, describing his friendship with and care for a profoundly disabled young man. They consider the simultaneous truths of the good of health, the resurrection of the body, and the full image of God in the bodies and lives of disabled people. They discuss the phenomenon of the “Ugly laws” of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Nazi eugenics program, the l...

Three boys play the Three Kings who deliver gifts on the eve of Epiphany. But what will they give the poor children they pass on the street? A delightful story of strong tradition broken by the power of love.

This story is one of several Swedish legends explaining why the Christmas Rose blooms in winter. 

Santiago Ramos on his outsiderness, the double homelessness immigrants live with that points to the eternal home. Read it here: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/immigration/the-quest-for-home

Simeon Wiehler, university dean in Rwanda, reflects on cruelty and healing in a land scarred by genocide, drawing on philosopher Immanuel Kant; Richard Kandt, a German colonialist obsessed with craniometry; and a young student, also named Kant. Read it here: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/politics/human-rights/three-kants-and-a-thousand-skulls

Far from home, one father transplants fig trees. Another crafts chocolates. A third creates places of welcome. Stephanie Saldaña, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Nour Al Ghraowi: three daughters give voice to each man's story, as their lives interweave. Read it here: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/reconciliation/in-search-of-lost-fig-trees

Ashley Lucas on the story of Russell Maroon Shoatz, a former Black Panther who spent three decades in solitary confinement, and the reckoning with violence past and present. Read it here: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/criminal-justice/the-end-of-rage

Edwidge Danticat on the stories that anchor us, the homes we build with words that no separation can take away. Read it here: http://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/immigration/home-is-not-just-a-place

Russell Moore discusses the future of Christianity and the church in a rapidly secularizing society. He explores why young people in particular are “losing their religion.” The reasons, he argues, are not just the cultural hedonism that Christians usually blame, but lie closer to home: young people realize that too often the church itself doesn’t really believe what it claims to believe. Read it h...

Peter and Susannah tackle our hardest listener questions: What are your hesitations about Christendom? Do you think that all national borders are unchristian? What IS the Bruderhof doing about Afghan refugees? Is it OK for a community to have insiders and outsiders? Is Plough just a bunch of SJWs? Then, they revisit the question of the reality of nations - What’s important about national identity?...

Peter and Susannah discuss Christian nationalism, and whether there might be a good version of this thing which so many books have recently been at pains to dismiss. They also talk about the reality of the bad version: Christianity which is nothing more than a tribal signifier. Then they talk about Oscar Romero as a potential model for an “integralism” which would be attractive to both Anabaptists...

In 1972, Russell Maroon Shoatz went to prison for the murder of a police officer. He spent 29 years in solitary confinement. Ashley Lucas, whose own father was imprisoned when she was growing up, reported and wrote a deep-dive piece on Shoatz’s life, his ongoing activism on behalf of Black liberation, and his relationship with his family. Pete and Susannah speak with Ashley about the process of wr...

Peter and Susannah welcome Tara Isabella Burton and Dhananjay Jagannathan to discuss the intersections of their recent pieces. Tara’s cosmopolitan upbringing led her to yearn for the connectedness of place, and yet she’s cautious about the potential dark side of that chthonic urge. Meanwhile, Dhananjay’s immigrant story and thoughtful loyalty to the America of the American idea will not let him di...

Peter and Susannah speak with novelist, journalist, and Iraq vet Phil Klay about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the folly of nation-building, and the promise of soft power.  Then they welcome historian Tom Holland, author of Dominion, to discuss the difference Christianity made to the mind of the West and the idea of Empire. What is the unique capacity Christianity has for appealing to both f...

Are national cultures something God values? What do we owe the sojourner? And is there something to this idea of Christendom? In this episode of The PloughCast, Peter and Susannah talk about Peter’s lead editorial’s controversial anti-Esperanto take, the perils and joys of Christian nationalism, and whether it’s coherent for an Anabaptist to be in favor of the idea of Christendom. Then, they welco...

Father–son relationships in The Mandalorian and Return of the Jedi sagas illustrate meekness as a healthy model for manhood. Manly Virtues by Noah Van Niel: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/community/leadership/manly-virtues

Beneath Panama City’s gleaming skyscrapers, traditional fishermen still venture out to sea for a hard-won catch.