Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home by Pope Francis

The wide scope of topics that this document covers conveys the fact that we do not live in isolation; all of our actions subsequently influence others; environmentalism relates to the economy as much as it does to planting trees.

Anne Marie Crinnion | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2017

An Interview with Jonathan Moo

"I think the reason Christians care for creation can be summarized by loving God and loving our neighbor, and in the process discovering who we were created to be."

Siobhan McDonough | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2017

Scientias Religionis

In this article I hope to shed some light on those areas in which behavioral biology actually has a lot to say about the religious experience.

Hailey Reneau | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2017

Faith in a Crowded Space

Yet most important to Dante, beyond the universe’s organization and population, is the fact that he was connected to it, and that the whole thing was powered by love.

Tess Fitzsimmons | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2017

The Peculiar Shape of Christian Identity

For Christians, personal identity is story-shaped (not abstract), derivative (not intrinsic), other-centered (not autonomous), and incomplete (not fully available to us in the here and now).

Teal McGarvey and Nick Nowalk | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2016

Augustine Collective Leaders Retreat 2018

Highlights from the Leaders Retreat, April 13-15, 2018

Twenty-eight students representing the core leadership from 15 journals convened in the greater Boston area to share ideas, grow intellectually, and build community together.

Augustine Collective | Augustine Collective | April 13-15, 2018

Highlights from the Annual Retreat 2018

With over 220 students and alumni from more than 20 colleges in attendance, this year's retreat was by far our largest yet!

Augustine Collective | Augustine Collective News | January 19-20, 2018

Is the Church Inherently Conservative?

I am not trying to decide once and for all if the church falls on the conservative side of the American political spectrum.

David Paiva | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2016

Created to Creator

I encountered Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem “Pied Beauty” last fall, clasped in the pages of a green and white anthology. I immediately recognized its beauty; it is a playful thing, quick-witted and high-spirited.

Kate Massinger | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2016

The Vatican Billions

How can the Church justify sitting on piles of cash while people around the world are living in poverty? When Her own founder said, “Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven” (Mk 10:21)?

Justin Sanchez | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2016

Spanish Mass at Harvard

I imagine there are other bilingual students at Harvard who experience these same discouragements at worship services for other faiths. However, this investigation will focus particularly on the experience of Spanish-speaking Catholics.

Marina Spinelli | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2016

Porn is Not Private: Why Viewing Pornography Perpetuates Injustice

If we have the social conscience to denounce the lies of sexual objectification or normalizing violence, we cannot let pornography get away with the same ideas.

Brandon Wright | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2016

On Marilynne Robinson’s Lila

In Marilynne Robinson's Lila, we are meant to see ourselves writ large: pitiful and scared, and not quite sure where we stand with God, or how we found ourselves here, in this house, tending to the garden, living this sort of life.

Kate Massinger | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2016

Augustine Collective Alum Obasi Shaw ’17 Awarded Honors for Rap Thesis at Harvard

Entitled “Liminal Minds,” the album combines such influences as Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper and Geoffrey Chaucer to portray contemporary black life in America. Shaw is the first in Harvard's history to submit a rap album for the senior thesis project.

Augustine Collective News | Augustine Collective | Spring 2017

Ending Global Poverty: An Interview with Economist Paul Niehaus ’04

"The early 2000s were an incredibly exciting time to study development economics because we were just starting to use experimental testing in a big way – like clinical trials in medicine, or A/B testing in tech."

Peter Hickman | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2016

Who Are the Middle Eastern Christians?

Westerners’ broad concern for Middle Eastern Christians was and is well intentioned, but poorly informed, in part due to apathy and in part due to the lack of resources on the subject.

Christian Šidák | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2016

A Restorative Response to Injustice

It is easy to look at a perpetrator and say that the problem lies uniquely in him or her. Yet I do not think Christians can do that.

Molly Richmond | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2016

When Culture Becomes Theology: Interracial Marriage in the American Church

The body of Christ has played an unfortunate role in stigmatizing interracial marriage in the United States.

Julie Coates | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2015

Augustine Collective Journals in the New York Times

Several member journals of the Augustine Collective were mentioned in a January 16, 2016 New York Times op-ed on evangelical students on secular campuses.

Augustine Collective | Augustine Collective |

The Problem of Evil: An Ichthus Roundtable

In addition to our own thoughts, we provide links to a wide variety of pieces on the problem of evil by professional philosophers.

The Harvard Ichthus Staff | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2015

Loving Jesus Back: Nuns Really Do Get Married

Several women in the community expressed the sentiment to me that their hearts are made to love more than just one man and the children born within one marriage.

Jane Thomas | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2015

How to Agape Love

The primary vocation of every person is to love, to strive for an agape love that extends beyond a philia love.

Marina Spinelli | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2015

Why Do We Suffer?

When I think of the Sandy Hook shooting, I am reminded of Ivan, one of the brothers in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov.

Obasi Shaw | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2015

Stop Freaking Out About Your Job

But your specific variety of work does not define you. And the more you think that it does or should, the more you dig yourself into a pit of anxiety and self-pity.

Nathan Otey | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2015

How Christians Navigate College and Career

I talked with six Christian seniors at Harvard, each with varying concentrations and potential career paths, to understand how Christians at Harvard think about their faith, academics, and future careers.

Brooke Dickens | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2015

On “Love III” by George Herbert

Love is gentle and kind, quietly observant of the persona’s hesitancy, and his questioning is not interrogative but “sweet."

Judith Huang | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2015

The Abortion Doula Paradox

I would not for a minute occlude the compassion and self-sacrifice that abortion doulas freely display, nor can I deem their actions good in light of how their work undercuts specific potential for human life.

Veronica Wickline | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2015

The Aestheticism of the Christian “Death”

So the hope of this essay is this: that both secular and Christian audiences find commonality in the comfort of beauty for ashes.

Henry Li | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2015

This Fine-Tuned Universe

The fact that our universe is life-permitting doesn’t give us evidence for the Many Universe Hypothesis. It does, however, give us evidence for a fine-tuning God.

Nathan Otey | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2015 blog

Review of The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick

Science and religion may never ever get back together in the same way, but Dolnick reminds us that in the not-so-distant past, they were once brothers.

Jordan Monge | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2015 blog

Kyrios Christos: The Lordship of Jesus Christ Today

Profession of a “lord” is not merely religious language for adoration on some spiritual plane; it is also a matter of social and political protest.

Michael F. Bird | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2014

The Trial of God

[In The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky,] the Grand Inquisitor points his finger at Christ and sentences him to death: “To-morrow I shall burn Thee. Dixi.”

Daniel Kang | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2015

Confession as Freedom

I would suggest that, logically, those who are the most enslaved are those who don’t even know that they’re slaves.

Nathan Otey | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2014

Harvard Ichthus Answers 200 Questions About God At Texts-4-Toasties

"Forty students volunteered to deliver toasties, answer questions [about Christianity], cook, and man the computers in our three stations in Thayer Basement, a Pfoho kitchen, and the Leverett Rabbit Hole."

Augustine Collective | The Harvard Ichthus |

Squirming in the Pew: A Confession

The issue is that we, as post-Emergent Church Worshipers, seem to view corporate worship as dependent upon our emotional response to it.

Brynn Elliot | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2014

A Catholic Confesses

Confession works even when I don’t expect or believe it will.

Jane Thompson | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2014

Where is God in History?

There remains one point about the narrative of history that is worth rejoicing over, and that is the power of larger, contextual narratives.

Henry Li | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2014

Why Do I Need to Confess My Sins to a Priest?

One of the questions that many people often ask Catholics is, “Who do you need to confess your sins to a priest to receive forgiveness?"

Fr. Mark Murphy | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2014

Review of Peter Enns’ “The Bible Tells Me So”

According to biblical scholar Peter Enns, many Christians are wrong about the nature of the book they consider Scripture.

Peter Hickman | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2014

Does God Play Dice?

How could God (knowingly, deliberately) create a process that brings about outcomes that He Himself does not know and cannot predict?

Stephen Mackereth | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2014

Rebellion Against the Bible?

There are four general strains of reasoning that argue for the reliability of the Bible: internal consistency, archaeological evidence, manuscript evidence, and logical extrapolation from history.

Dabin Hwang | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2013

The Alternative Lens of Revelation

As responsible thinkers in this society, then, it is important to endeavor to read [the book of Revelation] responsibly, keeping to the message as truly as we can.

Shaun Lim | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2013

The Rebellion of Faith

Christians do not know concretely how God will produce a favorable outcome from difficult situations, but they trust in Him because of evidence supporting His promise to do so and His overall track record throughout the Bible.

Brionna Atkins | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2013

The Westboro Baptist Church: Rebellion Gone Wrong

Simply put, the WBC expresses hate towards groups that do not adhere to their teachings and stances.

Daniel Abarca | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2013

Screwtape on Prefrosh

Unseat the desire for truth in your patient and replace it with a desire for academic respect, and your job is half done.

Judith Huang | The Harvard Ichthus | Summer 2011 - Special issue for the incoming class of 2015

Radical Generosity: How Christians Fail

According to one set of statistics, Christians give at 2.5% of income per capita, less than the 3.3% of income per capita given during the Great Depression.

Peter Hickman | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2013

The Great Commission

I will argue that throughout history the church has consistently been successful in making disciples of all nations, but the behavior of self-identified Christians in modern America are not radically different than the population at large.

Aaron Gyde | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2013

Jesus and Women: Rebelling against Misogyny

The gospels tell of Jesus' extraordinary conduct towards women, which takes on a radical nature when considered in the context of the oppressive environment for women in the Ancient Middle East.

CJ Curtis | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2013

Intelligence and Dogma: A Letter from a Sheep

One study found that, even when controlling for sex, race, education, earnings, and religion, more intelligent children are significantly more likely to grow up to be atheist seven years later.

Nathan Otey | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2013

Rethinking the Harvard Game

For 6 months away from Harvard I served as a semester missionary at a home for women experiencing crisis pregnancies. Most of these young women were victims of poverty, addiction, exploitation, and sexual assault.

Julie Coates | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2013

November 2018