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2 months ago | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Alexander Stern |Miles Doyle |Paul Moses |Robert Rubsam
Article A Barbaric Proposal Trump’s call for the ethnic cleaning of Gaza begins a new phase of suffering for Palestinians—and at the worst possible time. Article Turning Our Backs PEPFAR has long been a successful program for treating and preventing HIV. We must not let partisan politics kill it. Article Unchecked and Unbalanced It has taken Donald Trump and Elon Musk less than a month to lead the country into chaos and crisis.
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Dec 26, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Alexander Stern |Santiago Ramos |Vanessa R. Corcoran |Jonathan Malesic
In a memo for Ronald Reagan composed ahead of a May 1982 meeting with Pope John Paul II, Secretary of State Alexander Haig advised the president to emphasize his commitment to eradicating nuclear weapons, “the last great epidemic of our civilization.”The last great epidemic? It’s hard to read Haig’s words today without a twinge of disbelief, if not jealousy. We’re now living through what might be termed an age of epidemics, both literal and otherwise.
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Dec 3, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Paul Lauritzen |Alexander Stern |Céire Kealty |Michael Peppard
“All generations shall call me blessed,” she correctly predicted in her famous song of prayer, the Magnificat (Luke 1:48). From late antiquity to the present, images of Mary during her miraculous pregnancy, cradling the infant Jesus, suffering at his death, praying at his Ascension, and being crowned heavenly queen have populated Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. Whether wandering the countryside of Poland or Costa Rica, you will find her there.
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Nov 8, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Alexander Stern |Charles McNamara |Stephen Pope |Regina Munch
I watched the 2016 election coverage at a dive bar in downtown South Bend, Indiana. As the returns in Wisconsin and Michigan came in, it became apparent that a buffoonish, racist creation of tabloids, TV, and Twitter was about to become president. The bar, Frank’s Place, sits on the edge of the city’s blighted downtown and its regulars are working- and lower-middle-class people, Black and white.
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Anton Barba-Kay |Dominic Preziosi |Alexander Stern
It is regrettable, though perhaps not entirely surprising, that the Black artist Elizabeth Catlett is not better known: unsurprising because Catlett came of age in a time when women of color were marginalized as a matter of course, regrettable because of the power of her work, in which theme and medium are so closely aligned as to suggest destiny.
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Oct 18, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Phil Klay |Peter Quinn |Alexander Stern |George Scialabba
Two excellent new books defend the liberal project with wisdom and clarity. So why do they yield such little hope?
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Oct 15, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Justin Vassallo |Peter Quinn |Alexander Stern |George Scialabba
After a presidential election cycle once again defined by trench warfare in a few swing states, an unlikely insurgent in deep-red Nebraska could have a major impact on national politics come January. Dan Osborn, an independent candidate and union leader who led a strike at Kellogg’s Omaha plant in 2021, has gained momentum in his bid to unseat two-term Republican senator Deb Fischer.
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Oct 10, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Peter Quinn |Alexander Stern |George Scialabba
The Trump campaign has made us all too familiar with the ideology of Christian Nationalism, with its violent rhetoric and racist undertones. Far less well-known, though, is the tradition of Black Christian Nationalism, a radical social and religious movement founded by Rev. Albert Cleage, Jr., in civil-rights-era Detroit. On this episode, associate editor Griffin Oleynick speaks with writer Aaron Robertson, author of The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America.
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Oct 1, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Paul Moses |Peter Quinn |Alexander Stern |George Scialabba
I was skeptical about the federal investigation of New York City Mayor Eric Adams as details leaked out in the news media over the past year. The case involved free airline upgrades—which didn’t seem like the kind of gift that called for the FBI to seize a target’s phone in a street search, as occurred in Adams’s case. I was reminded of the time I covered a trip that New York Mayor Edward Koch took to eastern Europe in 1987.
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Sep 26, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Thomas Banchoff |Peter Quinn |Alexander Stern |George Scialabba
During his recent visit to Singapore, Pope Francis went further than any of his predecessors in recognizing the value of non-Christian traditions. “All religions are paths to God,” Francis told a group of young people. “There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian.”Some prominent conservatives have reacted with scorn.
