The Golden Thread (Substack), April 10, 2026 In the numerous interviews and podcasts I’ve done about The Golden Thread since the publication of vol. 1 last August, I’ve often been asked to explain how and why Christianity spread in the ancient world. I’m not sure why this subject comes up so often, unless my interviewers are trying to gauge just how Christian I am. I suspect some of them want to know whether I’m capable of a giving a secular, causal account in terms of socio

Law and Liberty, November 8, 2024 A disturbing feature of the present moment in our public life is that both sides are accusing the other of being a threat to democracy. People who hold that the events of January 6, 2020, can be plausibly described as the worst insurrection since the Civil War identify the Republican candidate as the chief source of this threat. The wealthiest man in the world shouts back through his megaphone on “X” that the real threat to democracy comes

Law and Liberty , November 27, 2023 I've long admired Gordon Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution as a model of intellectual...

First Things , November 7, 2023 With the victory of Octavian Caesar, the heir of Julius Caesar, over Antony and Cleopatra at the battle...

The New Criterion , September 2023 A c lassic debate among historians of Rome attempts to answer the question of how this city-state on...

First Things , May 12, 2023 King Alexander III of Macedon is beyond doubt among the greatest figures in world history. But was he a great...

First Things , March 4, 2022 Historians who write about merchant republics during the Renaissance often speak of an “honor deficit,” an...

First   Things , February 4, 2022 Many academics today are dismayed by the growing intolerance of heterodox thinking in contemporary...

Société, Droit et Religion , February 2, 2022 Certains lecteurs peuvent être étonnés de voir le terme «sécularité» dans le titre de cet...

First Things,   December 7, 2021 Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the European Renaissance was the profound harmony it achieved...

Law & Liberty , September 20, 2021 Old-school historians like me tend to be shy about using modern terminology to describe pre-modern...

The New Criterion,   September 2021 A civilization is a complex system of customs, practices, and beliefs that binds a society or a...

Public Discourse, July 28, 2021 Suppose you were living at a time when all around you, it seemed, civilization was breaking down....

Law & Liberty, June 17, 2021 It’s always difficult for persons of a conservative temperament to know what to think about the...

First Things, June 1, 2021 Twenty-twenty was a tough year for the tradition-minded, and so far, 2021 isn’t any better. Those of us who...

Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2021 Ours is an age of intellectual conformity. Perhaps this is true to some extent of all ages, as...

Sacred Architecture Journal, Spring 2021 "Christian humanism” seems an oxymoron. Since the nineteenth century, humanism has been widely...

Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2020 I don’t find the word “hyperpartisanship” in any dictionary. It’s not in the  Oxford English...

Law & Liberty, October 5. 2020 It was about fifteen years ago, I believe, that I first became aware that “classical liberalism” was a...

Church Life Journal, June 24, 2020 Some readers may be puzzled to see the term “secularity” in the title of this essay in place of the...

First Things, June 1, 2020 Human beings have always yearned to know the future, and there have always been other human beings who claimed...

Quillette, March 28, 2020 One of the comforts of studying history is that, no matter how bad things get, you can always find a moment in...

The Wall Street Journal, December 22, 2019 It’s common for historians to write books for the anniversaries of famous events, like the...

The New Criterion, November 2019 Among the “theoretical perspectives” that the modern academy expects us to take seriously is what is...

Claremont Review of Books, Fall, 2017 Carlos Eire, America’s leading historian of the Reformation, which marked its 500th anniversary in...