Featured

Behind the Black Umbrellas
A Portlander talks with the black-clad anarchists and Proud Boys battling in his hometown.
Patrick Tomassi
Dispatch
Beyond Pacifism
To be a Christian means serving as a soldier. This is no mere metaphor.
Eberhard Arnold
Essay
The Risk of Gentleness
I was shocked to find I was pregnant during a pandemic. Then I learned how subversive hospitality can be.
Gracy Olmstead
Essay
With Love We Shall Force Our Brothers
Peace is not quiet. The work of creating peace requires confrontation with the forces that undermine it.
Anthony M. Barr
Essay
We Will Not Be Silent
With an entire nation blindly following an evil leader, where did a handful of students find the courage to resist?
Andrea Grosso Ciponte
Comic
Call to Prayer, Call to Bread
Eighteen years among Somali Muslims in the Horn of Africa taught an American Christian much about prayer.
Rachel Pieh Jones
Personal History

From the Editor

The Case for Meekness
Before 2020, society overwhelmingly agreed: using violence for political ends ought to be out of bounds.
Peter Mommsen
From the Editor

Insights

Militant Peacemaking
Pacifism is unrealistic – unless it’s conformed to Christ.
Stanley Hauerwas
Reading
Did You Kill Anyone?
I was ready for that question, the biggest and most intimidating. It would hang as an ominous backdrop to nearly every conversation about my time in Iraq.
Scott Beauchamp
Reading
A Life That Answers War
A Bruderhof member, my grandfather is an ardent conscientious objector to military service. But resistance to war has shaped his entire life.
Scott Button
Essay
The Great Escape
For those trapped in the violence of poverty, rap tells heroic tales of breaking free.
Zito Madu
Essay
The Minimalist
The boxer to beat calls for help.
Springs Toledo
Personal History

Web Exclusives

Forgiving Judas
The patient work of reconciliation.
Denise Uwimana
Suffering with God
The prophetic legacy of Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Susannah Heschel
Is Human Life Always Sacred?
What Peter Singer got right that C. S. Lewis and John Paul II got wrong
Charles E. Moore
Essay

Arts & Letters

Poem: “March Thaw”
Overhead, skeins of geese ya-honk as they pass. / The dwindling snow crust, an eggshell of glass,
Catherine Tufariello
Poetry
Poem: “Candid”
Someone she loved, and who loved her, held the camera / And pointed it suddenly, teasing. The focus is blurred.
Catherine Tufariello
Poetry
Poem: “Annuals”
When we go limp and brown, for mercy’s sake / leave us alone; don’t mangle our last shoots / to press in any book; we have no stake / in memory.
Rhina P. Espaillat
Poetry
Poem: “The Widow Offers Herself to Life”
Make me your herald, Life: send me ahead / to hail you, as the earliest light is doing / for each day, and the scent of coffee brewing.
Rhina P. Espaillat
Poetry
Poem: “Mary Magdalen Responds to the Harsh Judge”
Be honest, please: I long to know / why judging others makes you glad: / does my uncleanness make you sad, / or lift you high as I am low?
Rhina P. Espaillat
Poetry
Poem: “In Retrospect”
What did he need to prove, / to no one but himself? What made him so / harsh with himself when others found him better— no, best—at everything? We’ll never know.
Rhina P. Espaillat
Poetry
Poem: “A Backward Look”
Some of us turned out much like Mama, though / a silent “No!” / crept into every dialogue, and kept / some secrets swept / into dark corners.
Rhina P. Espaillat
Poetry
Poem: “Where Nectar Was”
Thinking of you, all day I rediscover / myself still here, wondering where you went.
Rhina P. Espaillat
Poetry
Poetry You Can Touch
Plough’s poetry editor speaks with poet Rhina P. Espaillat, who recently turned eighty-nine.
A. M. Juster
Rhina P. Espaillat
Interview
Editors’ Picks: Charis in the World of Wonders
Joy Clarkson reviews Marly Youmans’s Charis in the World of Wonders: A Novel.
Joy Marie Clarkson
Reviews
Editors’ Picks: The Reindeer Chronicles
David R. Montgomery reviews Judith D. Schwartz’s The Reindeer Chronicles And Other Inspiring Stories of Working with Nature to Heal the Earth.
Reviews
Editors’ Picks: I Ain’t Marching Anymore
Bill Galvin reviews Chris Lombardi’s I Ain’t Marching Anymore: Dissenters, Deserters, and Objectors to America’s Wars.
Reviews
Editors’ Picks: “Floaters”
Sheryl Luna reviews Martín Espada’s Floaters: Poems.
Reviews