I have received quite a few emails recently from folks wondering why the magazine hasn’t offered remarks on the Israel-Hamas war. As a monthly magazine with a small staff, we are not able to generate articles quickly enough to match the news cycle—particularly not with the level of care and thoughtfulness we would like to give to such important events. We have been working on an editorial piece that, despite the diversity of opinions on our team of editors, would capture some of our shared thoughts and concerns.
That piece is now here. I want to give it to you mostly free of my own commentary, except to provide a bit of context. The piece is addressed to our readers, not to government policymakers in the US or anywhere else, so it doesn’t advocate for a particular policy approach. It does attempt to help readers with what we thought was the most important thing for Christians who are removed from these atrocities but deeply concerned by them: to resist simplistic narratives. The article has already been criticized a bit for “taking both sides” or “pretending the suffering is equal on both sides.” This simply isn’t the case in reality or in our article, but the both-sides-ism does have its place in this conversation—here in the US, there have been outbreaks of violence against both Jewish and Muslim people as a result of the Israel-Hamas war. Both types of violence stem from hatred, from inflamed rhetoric, and from the simplistic narratives that dehumanize Israelis or Palestinians.
If you are already inundated with stories and opinions on the Israel-Hamas war, there’s also some new lighter reading this week. Alejandra Oliva commends the God-haunted music of Julien Baker. Isaac Villegas humorously wrestles with the serious question of his responsibility to unhoused people. Plus more below.
Email me: What has been your reaction to the last month in this terrible conflict?
“If only the man I met outside the bar knew my heart, that I really do care, that my politics are aligned with social democratic principles, that I’ve read Marx.”
“I think the best way to encounter Julien Baker’s music, barring a concert venue in Brooklyn, is to do what I did for weeks afterward: listen to her music on your own, in a quiet room, eyes closed.”
“Her willingness to echo themes from a classic novel of the French Vietnam war is yet another sign of her impressive imagination. Absolution deserves to be read with fascinated interest for generations.”
“The soul of an engineer asks, how far is the satellite
from the observer on earth, based on the altitude
and the azimuth? How far can a soul wing its way
towards God while praying lectio divina . . .”
