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    ink drawing of a small yellow boat on a stormy sea

    Plough Quarterly No. 32: Hope in Apocalypse

    Summer 2022

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    Featured Articles

    All Articles

    From the Editor

    Hoping for Doomsday The times are troubled. That’s why we need the promise of apocalypse.

    Dispatch

    Searching for Safety In a refugee center outside Vienna, Ukrainian families wonder what comes next.

    Essays

    Radical Hope When worlds die, we need something sturdier than the myth of technological and social progress. The Sermon of the Wolf The Anglo-Saxon world was collapsing amid Viking terror and political chaos. One bishop held a kingdom together. The New Malthusians Population pessimists claim that having children threatens the environment. They are wrong. Tradition and Disruption Apocalypse, not dogma, is Christianity’s grounds for hope. The Apocalyptic Visions of Wassily Kandinsky As the world careened toward the Great War, a Russian artist pioneered a path out of the material to the spiritual. The Griefs of Childhood During the pandemic, I learned to weep with my children. Everything Will Not Be OK You can’t protect your children from tragedy. The Other Side of Revelation John’s Apocalypse can seem terrifying. But that’s not how the story ends. At the End of the Ages Is a Song To prepare for Christ to return and bring all things to completion, the early Christians sang.

    Reading

    Jesus and the Future of the Earth To the first Christians, the age to come was anything but otherworldly.

    Poetry

    Poem: “Stopping By with Flowers” I wasn’t free, but that part did not matter / so much, I told myself. It was the thought. / She loved my stopping by for those few minutes. Poem: “Sugarcane Memories” When I ask him to cut as’ab / he hesitates, then shudders it gone. Poem: “Sonnet Addressed to George Oppen, Arlington National Cemetery” Our wounded earth is flooded with a sea / of petals that flick and flutter as they’re spent.

    Editors’ Picks

    Editors’ Picks: In the Margins A review of Elena Ferrante’s In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing Editors’ Picks: The Genesis of Gender A review of Abigail Favale’s The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory Editors’ Picks: Sea of Tranquility A review of Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility: A Novel

    Family and Friends

    Diaconía Paraguay One family’s call to mission evolves into a microloan and employment organization. Winners of the Second Annual Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award On May 24, 2022, Plough announced the winners of the second Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award.

    Comic

    American Apocalypse A comic artist explores a peculiar national obsession.

    Community Snapshot

    Stable Condition An unlikely house extends a welcome to singles and families during Covid and beyond.

    Forum

    Letters from Readers Readers respond to Plough’s Spring 2022 issue, Why We Make Music.

    Interview

    The Spiritual Roots of Climate Crisis The answer to ecological challenges is not more technocracy, but conversion. War and the Church in Ukraine: Part 1 A pastor describes ministering in wartime Bucha and Kyiv.

    Report

    Syria’s Seed Planters The war with ISIS spawned a huge wave of refugees. But not everyone left Syria’s Khabur River valley.

    Forerunners

    Charles de Foucauld A young French hedonist follows Jesus into the desert.

    Covering the Cover

    Covering the Cover: Hope in Apocalypse This cover evokes the tempest of current events that threatens to overwhelm us from above and below.

    Featured Authors

    front cover of Plough Quarterly No. 32: Hope in Apocalypse, showing an ink drawing of a small yellow boat on a stormy sea

    About this Issue

    It’s an apocalyptic moment. The grim effects of climate change have left many people in despair. Young people often cite climate fears as a reason they are not having children. Then there’s the threat of nuclear war, again in the cards, which could make climate worries a moot point. The paradoxical answer ancient Judaism gave to such despair was a promise: the promise of doomsday, the “Day of the Lord” when God will visit his people and establish lasting justice and peace. Judgment, according to the Hebrew prophets, will be followed by renewal – for the faithful, and perhaps even for the entire cosmos. Over the centuries since, this hopeful vision of apocalypse has carried many others through moments of crisis and catastrophe. Might it do the same for us?