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[to be sure of getting all Country Parson posts subscribe to stevenwoolley.substack.c] My previous column expressed hope that the nation may be at a turning point—a moment when the public is more prepared to renew its commitment to our founding ideals. However important those ideals are—and I believe they are very important—they are not, by… Read more

I am grateful to all who have subscribed to Country Parson on WordPress, and I encourage you to subscribe as well at stevenwoolley.substack.com.. as for my many international readers who check in from time to time your subscriptions would also be much appreciated there is no cost. I am beginning to place greater emphasis on… Read more

The Bible’s Book of Judges tells the story of Israel’s struggle to reoccupy Canaan, the land of its origin, already inhabited by other peoples of different tribes and ethnicities. The historical veracity of Judges may be debated, but not its brutal honesty. It describes a violent, unstable time in which a people committed—at least in… Read more

e Will, willing, and willfulness are words that speak of want, desire, and intent—often with a stubborn determination to see those desires satisfied. Members of state legislatures and Congress frequently insist that the will of the people is being ignored by their opponents. National pollsters seldom claim they can truly measure such a thing, but… Read more

I wrote this piece about a year and a half ago to summarize discussions of an informal committee made up of two Christian clergy, a rabbi, and an ethicist, asked to offer counsel to several members of the William and Mary Law School faculty on questions about the relationship of artificial intelligence to morality and… Read more

I recently listened to a seven-year-old lecture by Rowan Williams at Keele University (North Stafforshire, U.K.) in which he described elements of democracy that cannot be surrendered without losing democracy altogether. Among other things, he argued that the executive in Washington, D.C., was doing its best to dismantle the integrity of other governmental institutions so… Read more