John Starke

Home
Archive
About

March 2021

Rethinking How We Talk About Weakness
I was talking with a friend on the phone the other day. She’s quite a hero in my book. She has set aside some personal ambitions and a vocational…
 • 
John Starke
Living Without An Admiring Audience
"American pop culture has teased us,” writes Terry Nguyễn, “with this carefree notion of youth — that you should be binge-drinking every other weekend…
 • 
John Starke
3
A Lent Within A Lent
William Willimon opens his book, Peculiar Speech with a reflection on freedom and thirst: In Egypt we thought our problem was our need for liberation…
 • 
John Starke
You Can Put a Man on the Moon but...
I am a few episodes into the podcast Obama and Springsteen have put together, “Renegades.” Much of what they talk about so far is reckoning with the…
 • 
John Starke

February 2021

Indifference to Love Turns Us Into Fools
Love covers a multitude of sins, but the lack of love makes room for all kinds of iniquity.
 • 
John Starke
2
Going From Expressive Individualism to Performative Individualism
The sociologist Robert Bellah in his important work, Habits of the Heart, describes our modern world as being marked by Expressive Individualism: a…
 • 
John Starke
Spiritual Bundling
From Peloton to QAnon
 • 
John Starke
4
Let Limitations Do Their Work
There are certain limitations that we’ve learned to live with. We can’t fly, for example, but not many of us complain. But there are certain limitations…
 • 
John Starke
1

January 2021

Power Is Not a Place to Form Virtue
There was a church across town that was electing a new elder and they didn’t have enough other elders to form a committee of sorts, so they asked me and…
 • 
John Starke
1
Everywhere Else Seems Like Nowhere
James Rebanks wrote a book called A Shepherd’s Life (2015), a book by a modern day shepherd on belonging to a community (the Lake District) and a…
 • 
John Starke
1
A Prayer and a Prayer
In Marilynne Robinson’s Home, the Reverend Boughton has two children: Jack and Glory. Jack was a hell-raising son, demanding all the attention of his…
 • 
John Starke
1
© 2024 John Starke
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture