Faith for Another Lenten Age

In his latest column expounding the themes of his new book, David Brooks reflects on how naked our public square has become. “As late as 50 years ago,” he writes, “Americans could consult lofty authority figures to help them answer” the timeless questions of right and wrong, good and evil. But “all of that went away over the past generation or two”; today, “intellectuals are given less authority and are more specialized. They write more for each other and are less likely to volley moral systems onto the public stage.”

To exemplify what we’ve lost, Brooks invokes first and foremost the last century’s most famous public theologian: “Reinhold Niebuhr was on the cover of Time magazine.”