Praying on downfall: Modern life requires concessions, chief among them the breakneck pace it demands of the average person. Apartments, cities, and living partners are all temporary, subject to swift change at a moment’s notice. In responding to the letters prompt “There’s nothing left to conserve,” Mariam ElNaggar looks for a constant, an anchor amidst a sea of uncertainty. That anchor is prayer, and that prayer requires a performance—at particular times, particular places, by people who care about keeping it alive. Celeste Alcalay, meanwhile, turns away from the transcendent and looks down at the terrestrial. In her essay “Memo for the next quarter century,” Alacalay mines through writer Italo Calvino and anthropologist Gregory Bateson to reflect on another tenet of modernity we’ve come to accept—our disconnect from the so-called natural world—and how doing so may be a great mistake.
Charlie Phelan, assistant editor
Patriot Acts: On May 17, in DC for a graduation, I stopped by the National Mall to witness Rededicate 250: “a historic gathering of Americans of every background across the country prepare for the nation’s 250th birthday with Scripture, testimony, prayer, and a rededication of our country as One Nation to God,” sponsored by the ambiguous semiquincentennial planning task force Freedom250.
Some of it was Biblical: A man held his wife’s legs in his lap after washing her feet with water from a Poland Springs bottle, and procession to the metro was Babylonic in its diversity. Yet some of it was not quite: A man sold beer cans plastered with the American flag, and miles of black curtains kept unregistered passersby from witnessing the likes of Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office Paula White-Cain.
So what was Rededicate 250? Was it Biblical? Was God really in the orange porta-potties on the National Mall? If we ever hope to heal the chasm between parties and sects—indeed, if we wish for “One Nation to God”—we must accept the question as irrelevant. For Freedom250 and the thousands who joined them through 90-degree weather to pray for America’s soul, God was there. And while we do not have to accept the vitriolic hatred of Trump (who appeared via a prerecorded video), we do need to accept that for thousands of Americans, God appeared alongside Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece Alveda King and Billy Graham’s granddaughter Cissie Graham Lynch on the stage. If we wish to conserve America’s soul—whatever that soul may be—we must accept that for some Americans, these events and the beliefs they encompass matter—if not normatively, then at the very least positively.
Nora Holmes, contributing editor
Founders, keepers: Amongst our generation, chronic feelings of insecurity are growing increasingly prevalent, spurred by the apparent death of the “American Dream.” Commonly manifesting in the idea that zoomers are the first generation that will not be better off than their parents—sometimes amended to the concept of baby boomers having been the last to pull it off— anxieties of impotence have left young people aimless and perturbed. Beyond the complex origins of such widespread feelings, the growth of this sentiment has been accompanied by an increased discomfort with or even hostility towards the idea of “being an American” across Gen Z.
Thus The Chicago Thinker, a campus publication which professes itself as an outlet for conservative and libertarian thought, held its second annual American Identity Summit this past Friday and Saturday. Former Thinker editor in chief Christopher Phillips stated in his opening remarks that grassroots organizations provide an important nexus for a young intellectual elite to move towards positive change and away from crumbling neoliberal institutions—thereby revitalizing Gen Z’s connection to America’s past and hope for its future. As such, one would expect that the conversation that followed would concern the ethical and cultural baggage and opportunities American youths have before them as they move through the university and into the real world. But this was not quite so. Continue reading online.
Reilly Pryma, assistant editor
Image: Alexander van Bredael, The Ommeganck in Antwerp, oil on canvas, 1697 (Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, Lille).