While Pride Month has waned in popular observance, there is still a notable place where it is featured not only during June but all year: progressive churches. While wandering London, Carl Trueman came across a Church of England parish touting a year’s worth of queer programming. 

“What was striking about the noticeboard was that neither God, Christ, nor the cross were mentioned. So perhaps Niebuhr needs updating: ‘No god, wrathful or otherwise, brought men, women, or those of alternative genders without sin to a drag show without judgment through the ministrations of no Christ and no cross.’”

For further reading: The deluge of Pride Month has slowed some over the past few years. Matthew Schmitz first observed this in 2024 in “The Fall of Pride.”

Brian Patrick Eha explores the work of Curzio Malaparte, whose writings on World War II “plumb the depths of degradation, as a willing witness.” And yet he lives to see a redeeming witness to life and goodness during an air raid in Naples in 1943.

“Everyone’s thoughts are bent on the dead and dying, on the holes newly blasted in the tumbled landscape of their beleaguered city. But again it is not suffering that impresses itself on Malaparte’s newly refreshed senses, but rather rude life or faith, the undying faith of a besieged people as they rise to meet the terrible moment.”

For further reading: In the August/September 2009 issue, Michael A. Ledeen wrote a fascinating consideration of the Neopolitan faith and it’s many quirks (“Death in Naples”).

Upcoming Newsletters

• June 9: The Protestant Mind by Dale M. Coulter | Subscribe here. 
• June 15: The Fourth Watch by James F. Keating | Subscribe here.

Until next time,

VIRGINIA AABRAM

Newsletter Editor