In this issue of Comment we have asked several of our contributors to explore various aspects of hope—to write about movements of hope in Protestant and Catholic Christianity; to explore possibilities for hope in China and in the relationship of North American political communities to their Muslim citizens; and, in our symposium, to tell us of signs of hope they are noticing.
And so, as we gather the words and pictures that make up Comment, we do so in the hope that the hurricane of God’s justice and mercy will yet blow in our lives; in the lives of our community of writers, artists and readers; and in the common life of our culture.
Every few decades a magazine emerges that reinvigorates the North American public intellectual scene, and eventually...