2018's Top Ten

To farewell the old year, and ring in the new, here are the ten most popular Plough Quarterly articles published in 2018. Here’s to another year of great writing in Plough! (If the Winter 2019 Quarterly is any indication, we’re off to an excellent start.)

1. Science and the Soul: Taught by a little girl who defied all expectations, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor explores what we know – and don’t – about the brain, mind, and soul.
2. Perfectly Human: Sarah Williams named her third daughter Cerian, Welsh for “loved one.” Cerian’s life ended in the hour before she was born.
3. Two Friends, Two Prophets: “Racism is Satanism.” This conviction launched Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel into the American civil rights movement and cemented his friendship with Martin Luther King Jr. 
4. Let Me Stand: “There’s a spirit of evil alive in the callousness of those who have not been thrown down by addiction,” writes Mark Schloneger, who lost his sister to an overdose.
5. Beyond Racial Reconciliation: “We have preached a gospel that leaves us believing that we can be reconciled to God but not to our Christian brothers and sisters who don’t look like us.” – John M. Perkins
6. Simulating Religion: A Christian takes stock of Silicon Valley’s rationalist community.
7. Dangerous Unselfishness: “I often return to this vision of empathy, sympathy, and compassion and the courage it takes to actually act with what Dr. King called ‘dangerous unselfishness.’” – Edwidge Danticat
8. Powers and Principalities: White supremacy, economic oppression, and militarism are spiritual realities in their own right, demonic powers that must be combatted with spiritual weapons.
9. The Beguines: “Men try to dissuade me from everything Love bids me do. They don’t understand it, and I can’t explain it to them. I must live out what I am.” Meet the Beguines, women who formed communities of worship and mutual economic support.
10. The Measure of a Life Well Lived: After their deaths, it seemed that these three women were giving me one last gift, extending an answer to the question that had dogged my vigil at my father’s side.

BONUS: And one more favorite that we couldn’t resist sneaking in, Julian Peters’s artistic interpretation of “Birches,” by Robert Frost: “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches…”