Featured

Woman with blood on her face and hands wearing dog tags, expressing distress with a man standing blurred in background.
Warriors on Stage
A veteran asks if theater can help heal the moral injury of soldiers returning home from the battlefield.
Scott Beauchamp
Essay
Metal chair casting intricate shadows on its seat against a stone wall background.
The Beauty of Belonging
Wherever people build, decorate, and shape things with a view to belonging, a kind of order emerges.
Roger Scruton
Essay
Abstract orange flowing smoke or wispy fabric shapes on a white background.
The Sacred Bonds of Sound
Have the sounds of worship been lost in translation? Sarah Ruden on the importance of silence and sound in scripture.
Sarah Ruden
Essay
Five men in colorful Renaissance clothing gathered around a table counting coins in low light.
It Could Be Anyone
A Muslim writer contends with two Christian paintings: an ancient icon of the Virgin Mary, and Caravaggio’s The Calling of Saint Matthew.
Navid Kermani
Essay
Religious icon showing Jesus, an angel with incense, 22 apostles in white robes with red sashes, and a soldier with a sword.
All About Light
If an icon is about anything at all, it is firstly about light.
Fadi Mikhail
Essay
Grid of black silhouetted figures on a textured background with one red figure raising an arm.
I Did Not Leave
Poet Cozine Welch Jr. takes us behind bars to look – truly look – at the men who stand in the prison common room.
Cozine Welch Jr.
Poem
Two people lighting candles together in a dimly lit space, their reflections on nearby glass.
The Last Christians in the News
News commentary and media coverage of Plough’s book, The Last Christians by Andreas Knapp.
Smiling man in suit holding happy baby girl sticking out her tongue, indoors.
A Man of Honor
People with same-sex attraction who want to follow Jesus may be among the most important witnesses of our time.
Essay

Insights

Rustic indoor space with people socializing and a sign pointing right for art and left for coffee.
Return to Appalachia
When funding cuts endanger the arts program in their Appalachian hometown, two graduates of Parsons School of Design return to teach art in a barn.
Susannah Black Roberts
The Doers
Vincent van Gogh style painting of swirling blue sky, clouds, green hills, and tall cypress trees.
Making a Work of Art
Each great artist’s vision sprang from the conviction that life could be better, richer, and truer than it was.
Reading
A winged armored angel with a halo, holding a sword raised above the head and a shield with a red cross, stands in front of a burning castle, while small winged figures with laurel wreaths are nearby.
The Business of the Artist

The church should use a decent humility before the artist, whose business it is to serve God in his own technique and not in somebody else’s.

Dorothy L. Sayers
Reading
Abstract silhouette of a saxophone player with raised hands surrounded by wavy lines and shapes.
The Creative Process
The artist must never cease warring with society, for its sake and for his own, to show the loneliness of birth, suffering, love, and death.
James Baldwin
Reading
Back view of a farmer holding a long stick across his shoulders in a field with haystacks at dusk.
Insights on Beauty
Insights on the nature of beauty, from Jacques Maritain, Dorothy Day, Basil of Caesarea, and Annie Dillard.
Inklings

Web Exclusives

A book titled 'He Held Radical Light Christian Woman' resting among illuminated wheat stalks at sunset.
The Wound Incarnate: Death, Art, and Immortality
At their best, art and faith make us aware of the wound incarnate, the sacred weakness of an eternal God who entered our finite world.
Close-up of yellow chanterelle mushrooms growing on forest floor with pine needles and leaves.
Chanterelles
The chanterelles lie in the rain-soaked leaves / like orange hibiscus flowers …
Book cover of Ted Kooser's Kindest Regards with a nighttime mailbox photo and Pulitzer Prize winner label.
Poet as Neighbor
A review of Kindest Regards by Ted Kooser. Kooser’s poems train us to notice to what we might be tempted to ignore.

Arts & Letters

Aerial view of people gathered around two long tables with large black-and-white eyes painted on them.
Giant Picnic
An anonymous installation artist held a picnic at a giant table that spanned the border fence between Mexico and California. His table had eyes…
Another View
Illustration of diverse people smiling and raising fists, one holding a camera above the crowd.
Excerpt: Mandela and the General
Will the freedom struggle end in a bloodbath? Only two men can avert it…
John Carlin
Oriol Malet
Comic
Blue and teal stylized text reads 'The Art of Community' on a textured, radial background.
Covering the Cover: The Art of Community
A closer look at the cover for Plough Quarterly 18.
Covering the Cover