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
John Ruskin, from Unto This Last (1860): THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings;...
Any serious reader of Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua, and of the many controversies appertaining thereunto, will repeatedly face a certain kind of problem. I will explain by reference to one example, though I could choose dozens of...
Ars Technica: In an April 28, 2025, appearance on Dr. Phil Primetime, an audience member asked Kennedy what he would do about “stratospheric aerosol injections,” which she claimed are “continuously peppered on us every day.” Kennedy...
The NYT asked a number of people to share their favorite moments from Thomas Pynchon’s fiction. Yikes. I have so many. The problem is that not one of the greatest passages in his glorious body of work makes complete sense to out of its...
Daring Fireball: If your opinion of a work art changes after you find out which tools were used to make it, or who the artist is or what they’ve done, you’re no longer judging the art. You’re making a choice not to form your opinion...
Jean: You have a right to have an ideal. Oh, I guess we all have one. Charles: What does yours look like? Jean: He’s a little short guy with lots of money. Charles: Why short? Jean: What does it matter if he’s rich? It’s so he’ll look up...
Dear Colleague, I understand that you wish me to participate in your protests against the Trump administration’s proposed “compact” with American universities. I will do so on one condition: that you openly acknowledge (a) that you were...
Mark Liberman: For decades, people have been worrying about declines in literacy rates, and even steeper declines in how many people read how many books, especially among students. For a striking recent example, see Niall Ferguson,...
Last month, when I was suffering from a vertigo and unable to read for more than a few seconds at a time, my constant companion was the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald, and especially her four great Songbooks: Gershwin, Ellington, Cole...
I wrote in my anarchist notebook: Jacques Ellul thinks that Christians should be anarchists because God, in Jesus Christ, has renounced Lordship. I think something almost the opposite: it is because Jesus is Lord (and every knee shall...
Phil Christman has said that Adam Roberts, Francis Spufford, and I form a kind of writerly school — though he has yet to define its parameters. I kinda hope he does that one day. UPDATE: Phil has written firmly to me: Now, listen here —...
At Evangelical Colleges, A Revival of Repentance – The New York Times (1995): Students at evangelical colleges are embracing a revival calling them to repent. “We haven’t seen a student revival since the Jesus movement days of the late...
Two weeks ago I entered mortal combat with Covid, and have emerged victorious but not unscathed. This bout featured an unexpected symptom: persistent vertigo, especially when looking at text. Not a great situation for someone in my line...
What people do in response to violence is consolidate the myths they live by. This focuses emotion and fosters solidarity, but it also renders people susceptible to control by non-human forces, submission to which, in times of crisis,...
The starting point for my friend Tim Larsen’s new book The Fires of Moloch is another book, one published in 1917 and often reprinted over the next few years. The Church in the Furnace is a collection of essays by Anglican clergymen who...