"These things are old. These things are true." With these words, Barack Obama reaffirmed America's commitment to "those values upon…
Barack Obama’s Book of Virtues
American politics
Niebuhrian in the White House
Barack Obama is often described as some kind of Niebuhrian, a tag he has encouraged by describing Reinhold Niebuhr as…
Remembering Obama
What is the past through which "these things"---"honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and…
President Obama’s Catholic sensibility
President Barack Obama's May 17 commencement address at the University of Notre Dame deftly demonstrated the president's unique ability to…
Obama’s living virtues
Obama's list of virtues comes in pairs, and the pairings are mutually illuminating. I will, though, examine them not in…
“Out of many, one”
That devotion to the theme "E Pluribus Unum," "out of many, one," is among the things that are old in…
“These things are old”: A new discussion series at
The Immanent Frame
Consider these words from the President's Inaugural Address: Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them…
The Oprahfication of Obama
First, you need a name. Not just any name. A weird name: a Biblical misspelling, maybe, or an invocation of…
This is our moment, this is our time
For a long time after November 4, I found it hard to believe that Barack Obama had actually been elected…
Violence, publicity, and sovereignty
Today we are once more at a time when lawless violence proliferates and territorial boundaries are infringed upon, when state…