Featured

Silhouette of a person in a hat sitting on a hill with stylized plants against a cloudy sky.
The Joys of Tech Asceticism
Elon Musk, the man who started four billion-dollar tech companies, is worried that computers are on course to kill us.
Peter Mommsen
From the Editor
Two people working with power drills at a workshop bench with red toolboxes in the background.
Anabaptist Technology
In 1998, Community Playthings, the church-run manufacturing business based in New York in which I work, tried abandoning email...
John Rhodes
Essay
Close-up of a hand holding a red apple with a snake wrapped around it.
The Immortality Machine
Is transhumanism, with its dreams of immortality, acceptable to Christians?
Essay
A bearded man carving wood in a workshop with tools and a water bottle on the bench.
The Perfect Tool
“The axe is the perfect tool. It is the tool. It is tool. Every woodworking tool is resting there in the axe waiting to be born.”
Susannah Black Roberts
The Doers
Group of people sitting close in dim light holding lit candles in a solemn gathering.
Simulating Religion
“Strange and surprising subcultures are thriving in Silicon Valley, among them a loose-knit community calling themselves rationalists.”
Alexi Sargeant
Essay
The Tower of Babel painting showing a large unfinished zigzagging stone tower surrounded by a city and landscape.
The Gods of Progress
We speak of progress, but where are we progressing to? In 1948, a British farmer-poet penned this prophetic essay.
Philip Britts
Essay
Silhouette of a person sitting by a window with decorative metal bars, looking outside.
The Technology of Gender
What’s at stake when we artificially alter a human being in regard to something as fundamental as biological sex? An interview with Dr. Paul R. McHugh.
Interview

Insights

Two people sitting on a sidewalk wearing jeans; one in sneakers, the other in sandals with painted nails.
Your Neighbor Lives Next Door
When folks ask us what it’s like to live without the conveniences of modern technology, our best answer is that it has localized our lives.
Essay
Person in a jacket sitting on a mossy rock by a calm lake with forested hills in the background.
Endangered Habitat
Just as we protect endangered natural habitats, so we must preserve silence, the space that allows both speech and the soul to flourish.
Essay
Teens sitting around a campfire at night, one holding a cup and another roasting marshmallows.
Meet a True Story
Technology fails to satisfy our need for real human connection. A boom in live storytelling could be changing that.
Essay
Abstract long snake with many legs and a red apple on its head, tongue sticking out.
The Immortality Delusion
A prescient reading on technology from C. S. Lewis’s novel, That Hideous Strength.
CS Lewis
Reading
Close-up of hands carving a thin wood curl from a piece of light-colored wood.
The Pencil Box
“God bless the craftsmen who give their fellow men such feelings even out of pieces of wood.”
Reading
Painting of a young girl resting her chin on her hand, wearing orange with red hair ties.
Why Children Need White Space
Just as books require white space, so do children. They need room to grow, in a space shielded from the onslaught of the information age.
Johann Christoph Arnold
Reading
An elderly man with glasses repairing a manual typewriter in a workshop filled with various tools.
The Soul of Work
Love is work, work of muscle and mind, heart and soul. Therefore this kingdom of love – this kingdom of the church and of the coming rule of God – must be a kingdom of work.
Eberhard Arnold
Reading
Shelf filled with old, stacked books, one open showing a handwritten page with red annotations.
Digging Deeper: Issue 15
Books that help us think well about technology: Shop Class as Soulcraft, The Abolition of Man, Brave New World, Technopoly, and Devices of the Soul.
Digging Deeper
Painting of two figures sitting on a ledge against a large blue sky filled with white clouds.
Insight: Finding Someone to Worship
Have you ever looked at the world to see what is driving it, what it has dreamed up in the way of worshiping God in some way?
Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt
Inklings
Close-up painting of a smiling young girl with blonde hair and blue eyes in a greenish background.
Insight: Friedrich Froebel
“You, who roam through garden and field, through meadow and grove, why do you close your mind to the silent teaching of nature?”
Friedrich Froebel
Inklings
Smiling elderly couple sitting on a white wicker bench outdoors with greenery behind them.
Insight: Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer
As a farmer, I do almost all of my work with horses. As a writer, I work with a pencil or a pen and a piece of paper.
Wendell Berry
Inklings

Arts & Letters

View looking up the orange rails of a steep roller coaster track with blurred motion effect.
A poem for my son about grace
My son slouches when he walks,/ shoulders rounded, chin jutted/ forward, his self moving slow . . .
Jacob Stratman
Poetry
Painting of a bearded man holding a banjo framed by arching tree trunks with birds and distant mountains.
Go On, Inner Man
“I began this painting while living as a hermit in Kansas. By the time it was finished it had grown into a wedding gift to my wife.”
Another View
Painting of a woman in a yellow dress leaning over and reading a book.
Readers Respond: Issue 15
Anabaptist triumphalism; Church, state, and monarchy; Iraq’s Christians; remembering the elderly; and Early Christian hope.
Forum
Stone wall and rocky terrain overlooking hills with scattered buildings and cloudy sky.
How to Homestead a Hermitage
“How far is it to Bethlehem?” Not very far indeed, say fifteen minutes’ walk. See, there it is through the olive trees.
Dispatch
Person in formal attire writing on white paper with a pen on a reflective surface.
The Pen and the Keyboard
A vintage pen signifies much more than just another tool, even to the tuned-in and logged-on Millennial.
Viewpoint