Timeless Archives
by James M. Kushiner
Many folks dismissive of tradition-minded Christians accuse them of wanting to "turn the clock back." While among us there may be an occasional element of antiquarianism or even Luddite enthusiasm, such tendencies are just diversions from mere Christianity.
C. S. Lewis was dismissed for being, as he called himself, a dinosaur, for his "medieval" thinking, while he accused the modern age of "chronological snobbery." Yet Lewis is still being published and read, while most, if not all, of his cultured despisers have become yesterday's wallpaper, covered up by paperhangers busily keeping up with Progress.
Mere Christians are less interested in where to put the hands of the clock than in spending time with the eternal. To read and meditate upon the Psalms is not turning the clock back; it is reorienting oneself to the eternal. To read Paul, Augustine, Dante, and a host of others is not antiquarian but spiritually relevant. We cannot return to a golden era, but we can draw from ancient wellsprings, for today is always the day of our salvation.
Touchstone publishes timeless articles that it will be beneficial to read years from now. If you peruse our digital archives, going back more than 25 years, you will discover many articles very much worth reading in 2021. And if any article in the archives or in print this year is especially helpful to you, please let me know (jmk@fsj.org); it might end up in a future anthology. I very much appreciate feedback from our readers.
James M. Kushiner is the Director of Publications for The Fellowship of St. James and the former Executive Editor of Touchstone.
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more from the online archives
32.2—March/April 2019
Finding Him Again Through the Patriarchal Group by Anthony Esolen
22.3—April 2009
Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by J. Daryl Charles
11.5—September/October 1998
Speaking the Truths Only the Imagination May Grasp
An Essay on Myth & 'Real Life' by Stratford Caldecott
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