The Homebound Symphony
The Homebound Symphony
Alan Jacobs
I am — let me take a deep breath — the Jim and Sharon Harrod Endowed Chair of Christian Thought and Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program of Baylor University. I’ve been at Baylor for eleven years and before that taught for three decades at Wheaton College in Illinois. I was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. I’ve been married for forty-four years and have a grown-up son. I am an Anglican Christian.
Latest Posts
BAIRD WHITLOCK AS AUTOLOCHUS: This Hebrew is son of the one God, the God of this far-flung tribe. And why shouldn’t God’s anointed appear here, among these strange people, in this strange place? Here, Gracchus, in this sundrenched land....
N. Ángel Pinillos asks, Why Are Humanists So Bad at Defending the Humanities? — and his answer is that humanists’ defenses of the humanities fail when they argue that the humanities have any kind of intrinsic, as opposed to instrumental,...
In this piece on why he blogs, Noah Smith says that blogging has allowed me to inject ideas into the discourse with unparalleled speed, breadth, and access. A researcher goes deep into a few topics; a blogger can quickly hit the main...
I just saw a Brit on BlueSky mocking “an actual respected American online news commentator” for pronouncing “Macron” to rhyme with “Ramone.” My first thought: Pronounce the word “Paris” for me. Likewise, one of the Guardian footy...
Existing biographies of Bob Dylan are not what they claim to be. Instead, they tell the life story of one Robert Allen Zimmerman, born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941, and raised in the nearby town of Hibbing. When, twenty years later,...
All functional approaches to the investigation of myths – in terms of their social, cognitive or emotional values – have arguably a common epistemological foundation. They all imply, if they do not explicitly assume, that the language of...
Brad East: The gospel does not promise you health. It does not promise you wealth. It does not promise you anything in this life except the person and work of Jesus. You may or may not get married; you may or may not have children; you...
I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead! — Lesslie Newbigin To hope radically is to see the new possibilities for human flourishing where none seemed possible before. […] Radical hope, as I have been...
When classes ended in May, I was with my wife in the hospital, so I couldn’t wrap up my classes appropriately. Instead, I recorded brief audio lectures. Below you’ll find a transcription (with links added) of the lecture I sent to my...
I see that The Rest Is History has recently done a series on what happened at Gallipoli in 1915, which as it happens is one of my obsessions. This isn’t a post about that campaign as such, but about two related things. ~ 1 ~ The assault...
I’ve bought a year of the Pro plan. At the end of that year I will do a thorough reassessment, and will not renew unless I can (a) identify significant ongoing needs, (b) continue to believe that Anthropic is not quite as corrupt as the...
Antón Barba-Kay: AI is not “inherently evil” in the sense that it can be used exclusively to bomb and oppress. But not even nuclear weapons or machine guns work that way. We are never caused to do anything by a tool (or a narcotic)....
A beat is a repeated sequence of percussive effects. A groove is an extended engagement with time. It takes certain musical skills to construct a good beat, but that’s a job you can outsource to a machine. There’s a different kind of...
My friend Edward Mendelson knows more about Auden than anyone ever has, and probably more than anyone ever will. Certainly he knows far more about Auden than I do. Keep that in mind through what follows. Some years ago Mendelson wrote an...
I don’t mean to compare myself in any serious way with a major thinker like Rowan Williams, but in his new book, Solidarity: The Work of Recognition, he is working on exactly the same problem that I have been working on in recent years:...