I don’t think I’ve ever (until now) written for a publication before I’ve ever actually seen a copy. I wrote an article on the death of John Updike for a new journal The City, published by friends at Houston Baptist University. The issue just arrived in the mail, and (apart from my contribution, of course) it is truly excellent.

The summer 2009 issue includes articles by Wilfred McClay on the soul in the city, Hunter Baker on science and secularism, Peter Augustine Lawler on Solzhenitsyn, and Robert P. George on Obama and abortion. The issue also features a symposium on “younger evangelicals.”

The symposium includes this quote from Francis Beckwith: “If the young evangelicals are really serious about ’struggle’ and ‘authenticity,’ they should avoid drama queens like Donald Miller and look at those who have really lived it.” This is in the midst of Beckwith’s argument that “authenticity” is being treated by some evangelicals as one more commodity to be acquired in the whirl of their “image-hypnotized” lives.

You should subscribe to this journal. Kudos to Houston Baptist University, and to their president Robert Sloan for leading this great school to this kind of intellectual leadership.