Featured

Woman in beige shirt with blood on hands and face, looking distressed, man 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 with decorative swirls casting shadows on seat against stone wall.
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 flowing orange and brown smoke or ink patterns 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 17th-century attire around a table counting coins in a dimly lit room.
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 featuring Jesus, angel, and a group of haloed men with red and white robes.
All About Light
If an icon is about anything at all, it is firstly about light.
Fadi Mikhail
Essay
Artwork showing multiple black silhouettes of people with one red silhouette raising an arm amid abstract textures.
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.
Poetry
Two people lighting candles placed in sand inside a dimly lit room near a reflective wall.
The Last Christians in the News
News commentary and media coverage of Plough’s book, The Last Christians by Andreas Knapp.
A man in a suit holding a happy baby girl in a floral dress, both smiling and joyful.
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

Sign with arrows pointing right to art and left to coffee in a warm, busy indoor space with people.
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
Swirling blue and white sky with tall dark cypress trees and rolling hills in foreground.
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 figure’s leg stepping on a mythic creature with goat horns, a dog's face, and a serpentine body on the ground.
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 painting of a saxophone player with raised hand surrounded by flowing 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
Man in red shirt and straw hat holding a pole across his shoulders in a field with haystacks.
Insights on Beauty
Insights on the nature of beauty, from Jacques Maritain, Dorothy Day, Basil of Caesarea, and Annie Dillard.
Inklings

Web Exclusives

Book cover titled He Held Radical Light Christian Wiman with celestial circle art and wheat background.
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 covered with leaves and pine needles.
Chanterelles
The chanterelles lie in the rain-soaked leaves / like orange hibiscus flowers …
Book cover of Ted Kooser's Kindest Regards: New and Selected Poems with mailboxes in background.
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

Bird's-eye view of two long tables facing each other with large eye images, people seated and standing around.
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
Black and white illustration of diverse people raising fists and holding a camera, with an orange background.
Excerpt: Mandela and the General
Will the freedom struggle end in a bloodbath? Only two men can avert it…
John Carlin
Oriol Malet
Comic
Artistic lettering of the phrase 'The Art of Community' in blue and teal colors on textured background.
Covering the Cover: The Art of Community
A closer look at the cover for Plough Quarterly 18.
Covering the Cover