Radical Reformation, by Jack Hanson
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August 2026 Issue
[Essay]
Radical Reformation
The Catholic Church’s progressive revival
by Jack Hanson ,
Collages by Vanessa Saba. Source images: a satellite image of the Strait of Hormuz. Courtesy NASA; the pope’s regalia © Alpha Stock/Alamy; President Trump © Tia Dufour/AC NewsPhoto/Alamy
[Essay]
Radical Reformation
The Catholic Church’s progressive revival
by Jack Hanson ,
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“Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell”: President Donald Trump’s Easter-morning missive on Truth Social, like so much of what he says, had a totemic quality, an ability to capture his whole way of being while setting the terms for the rest of us, whether we like it or not. “Many such cases,” “Sad!”—these have an extraordinary way of working their way into one’s head and staying there until they feel almost natural. With each passing day it becomes easier to forget that MAGA, in addition to a quasi-ideology and quasi-cult, is a…
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August 2026 issue
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The Catholic Church’s progressive revival
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Jack Hanson is a lecturer in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
Tags
American politics<br>Catholic Church<br>Donald Trump<br>Easter<br>European history<br>Pacifism<br>Pope Leo XIV<br>Roman Catholic Church<br>St. Augustine<br>World politics
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