You may have noticed a shift at Comment over the past few months as we wholeheartedly embrace our belief that a magazine, at its core, is an aspirational community.
You may have noticed a shift at Comment over the past few months, as we wholeheartedly embrace our belief that a magazine, at its core, is an aspirational community. We’ve been working diligently, taking important steps like establishing a dedicated staff position to build and nurture our community, launching our inaugural subscriber survey, and introducing this community-focused newsletter. Additionally, we’ve started hosting various virtual events like our two poetry series during Advent and Lent, our Visio Divina event in May, and our first Author Conversation in June. Our desire has been to open the door to a two-way conversation with our growing community, actively seeking your input to better understand how we can cultivate genuine engagement and connections.
Through dozens of conversations with subscribers like you, we have learned valuable lessons. One important insight was that hosting a Comment Supper isn’t easy. In response, we have developed new resources and improved existing ones, including a step-by-step guide, recommended essays for each issue, and more conversation-stimulating bookmark questions.
Starting with our current issue, we’ve broadened our Comment Supper bookmark questions to encompass the entire theme, recognizing the difficulty of expecting guests to have read the whole issue. We will, however, still select two essays from each issue and tailor questions to facilitate more focused discussion. For our summer issue, the editorial team has chosen “Red Rose Rescue” by Leah Libresco Sargeant and “Dreamer of Dreams” by Gregory Thompson. To make hosting even easier, we’ve prepared downloadable and shareable PDF guides with these questions for you to send to your guests in advance. You can check out all these resources at comment.org/suppers.
We hope these resources will be helpful as you consider hosting a Comment Supper club in your neighbourhood, a discussion series in your workplace, a themed exploration in your church small group, or a simple one-table conversation at home or in a restaurant. If you’re curious about connecting with other Comment readers nearby, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at team@comment.org. We’ll be delighted to facilitate connections among “Comment neighbours”!
Community Spotlight
Cultivating a learning community at Alcuin Study Center.
Dan Daugherty, executive director of Alcuin Study Center, joins attendees of the centre’s event, A Well-Tuned Life: The Music of Human Flourishing, to listen to Andrew Crow’s talk on faith and music.
Meet one of our long-time subscribers, Dan Daugherty, the executive director of Alcuin Study Center, an educational non-profit adjacent to Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. After gaining over a decade of experience in college ministry and spending twelve years teaching humanities at a classical Christian school, Dan and some of his friends founded the centre in 2020 during the pandemic lockdown. Inspired by the timeless wisdom of Alcuin of York and the Venerable Bede, Dan and his team strive to cultivate an environment where questions concerning our shared humanity are approached with humility and sincerity.
As Dan puts it, “We saw the need for a third place—a place where the academy and the church could meet to participate in honest, charitable discourse surrounding enduring human questions. What is beauty or goodness? What does it mean to be human?” At Alcuin, they believe that education, dialogue, humour, prayer, and friendship are the keys to creating a society that values the preservation and passing on of all that is true, good, and beautiful from one generation to another. “Rather than violence, Alcuin advocated for these principles,” Dan explains, highlighting that “Alcuin himself convinced Charlemagne to stop lopping off the heads of those who wouldn’t believe.”
The Alcuin Study Center is a member of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers, which traces its roots to institutions like L’Abri, Regent College (Vancouver), and Ligonier Valley Study Center. In the words of Alcuin, “Irrigate their lands with learning.” Dan and the team at Alcuin Study Center are doing just that, one conversation at a time.
Are you up to something exciting or interesting that you’d like to share with the Comment community? Whether it’s a personal accomplishment, a hobby you’re passionate about, or a project you’re working on, we want to hear about it! Reply to this email and tell us your story.
Upcoming Events
Help shape our upcoming events on gender.
As we’ve hinted in previous events and communications, our upcoming fall issue will dive into the extensive subject of gender. This undertaking is vast, and while we can’t cover everything, we’re taking advantage of the many topics of conversation this hot cultural potato provides and building out a series of extra events to accompany the print issue. Our live webinars present a unique opportunity for our readers to engage directly with our editorial team, authors, and fellow subscribers. Stay tuned as we announce that series, and please get in touch with me if you have angles you’re particularly keen to explore.
Past Events
Watch our inaugural Author Conversation.
Last month, Anne Snyder hosted a public conversation between Comment contributors Chelsea Bombino and Laura Fabrycky on the power of hiddenness, motherhood, civic housekeeping, and political love.
You can now watch this conversation, which builds on Comment’s ongoing quest for a fresh paradigm for thinking and designing effective “seedbeds” of social change. Chelsea, whose piece (written with her husband, Joshua) on “spiritual motherhood” captivated readers in our spring issue, and Laura, whose summer essay “The Birds and the Beguines” sings with a kind of holy defiance and historical recovery, talk together about the long-term impact of subversive communities built on intimacy with God and service to one another.
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