Commonplacing: Alan Jacobs on the Task of the Christian Cultural Critic

One of my favorite living Christian scholars is Alan Jacobs, whom I have mentioned in this space before. Nearly everything he says rings true to me, and even when I disagree with him I learn something from hearing him out. He just started blogging for The American Conservative, perhaps the only website out there that espouses consistently the type of conservatism I feel most drawn to (and one that has very little place in today's GOP). I recommend it as must read material. In his first post at TAC he links to an old essay of his, written for Books and Culture, another great magazine I wish I had the time to read more consistently. I had read it before, but after two years of graduate school its words seemed fresher than ever (of course he hooks me in with some good discussion of Milton at the beginning). Enjoy (read the whole thing):

It seems to me that the careful dance, the difficult balance, of Christian cultural criticism is to be endlessly attentive to the form and the details of the world around us, while simultaneously practicing the "politics of long joy"—and in this way avoiding an unhealthy obsession with "trophies," and avoiding also being conformed to the ways of this world. It's a tough walk to walk, because one of the peculiarities of fallen human nature is that we find it difficult, over the long haul anyway, to remember that there is a world of difference between "I have no control over this" and "this isn't very important." We tend, against all reason, to diminish the importance of everything we cannot shape or direct. But our joy will be short if it is grounded in circumstances and events, because circumstances and events always change: if they please us now, they will displease us later. And then what will we do?

Central to this discipline, for me anyway, is a constant striving to remember who human beings are and what we are made for. . . The truth of who we are, given the extremes of divine image and savage depravity, is hard to discern; perhaps we can only achieve it in brief moments; perhaps we only catch rumors of the glory that is, and is to be. But even those rumors can sustain us as we walk the pilgrim path.

Alan Jacobs,  "The Politics of Long Joy"