Evan Sandsmark

In the twilight of Reading Religion , I was able to get in one more review, this time of the book Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic (Yale, 2026). The book is a bit uneven, but overall rich in biographical and spiritual detail, framing several famous conversions (Wilde, Greene, etc.) as "great inner dramas, with a soul in prolonged and agonized dialogue with a silent God, pulled in various directions because of the pleasures and tragedies of life." Read the review here .

This essay  is at the moment only available in the print magazine, but if an online version becomes available, I'll update this post with the link. The piece is about free speech and Trump's indifference to Europe (and almost everything else), which becomes more harmful by the day. Here's an excerpt from near the beginning: *** The basic worry is that Trump wants to leverage his power to run roughshod over Europe. He has his eye on the continent, and this is causing no end of anxiety for European leaders and ordinary citizens alike.  But this framing misses a crucial fact: Trump doesn’t actually care about Europe. He doesn’t care about its wars, security or independence and he likewise doesn’t care about free speech – not in general (just ask Jimmy Kimmel) and certainly not in Europe. Trump simply does not hold a principled commitment to free speech. The situation recalls a famous scene in the television series Mad Men, where Michael Ginsberg confronts Don Draper for ignori...

After editing well over a thousand reviews for Reading Religion , I finally wrote one myself. It's of Mary Frances Coady's biography of the British Catholic writer and artist Caryll Houselander, who led a quiet existence that concealed a spiritual life of unusual depth and intensity. It is available here .

  A few months ago OpenAI released their o3 and o4-mini models , prompting some to declare the arrival of “Artificial General Intelligence” (AGI) . Meanwhile, a steady contingent—often humanities scholars—remains largely dismissive of AI , viewing it as a gimmick , typically for noble, student-related reasons. I’m certainly not prepared to say we’ve reached AGI, in part because AGI is a notoriously (and perhaps inherently) nebulous concept, but mostly because it doesn’t matter. Contra the skeptics, I’m convinced the models will continue improving, for good or ill, and the role of humans in this new world will become harder to define. I mean the role of humans in intellectual work: the production of knowledge, the discovery of truth, and the creation of beauty. Barring an AI apocalypse , I assume that humans will continue to play some role in the world regardless of how advanced AI becomes. We will continue to cook and eat, walk around our neighborhoods, get haircuts and take sh...

On November 6, 2024, I awoke early in the morning, perhaps around 5:30 or 6am, after only a few hours of sleep. I had gone to bed around 2am Vienna time, when the news was beginning to look bleak, but the results were far from certain. A glance at my phone confirmed the outcome. Sickened, I quickly washed, dressed, and left my room in the middle of the city. I had a small bag with a change of clothes, a bag of mixed nuts, a half bottle of wine, my laptop and phone, and a few other valuables. I gave everything away to the first destitute person I came across, asking only that he pray for the suffering in return. I took a streetcar to Wien Hauptbahnhof and got on a train heading southwest toward a monastery I had visited a few years earlier. I entered the monastery several hours later, officially as a visitor but hinting at more long-term intentions, and from that moment until now I have not read any news or communicated with the outside world. My days have been filled with physical wo...

If you’re freaking out about the election following Biden’s catastrophic debate, it’s worth remembering that our beliefs are frequently wrong, our ability to anticipate the future is an illusion, and worrying about outcomes is futile. Or so the great Blaise Pascal argues, and in an essay for the Political Theology Network  I try to convince myself, as an act of self-therapy as much as anything else, that he is at least directionally correct. This may be the only way to find tranquility in an era of political emergency.

I wrote a piece for the Washington Post about religious exemptions to vaccination. Such exemptions lack any religious or theological justification, and they are also historically anomalous. Religious exemptions to vaccinations, however, have generally lacked a coherent basis, and those seeking them for coronavirus vaccination face an uphill battle. Religious beliefs have not historically been used as a justification to avoid vaccination, and the recent emergence of religious-based exemptions — animated by partisan politics, fear and debunked scientific studies — is an anomaly. This is not surprising, given that getting vaccinated (to protect yourself and others, especially the most vulnerable) fits neatly into the moral logic of the world’s major religions. This is one reason Pope Francis has called getting vaccinated against the coronavirus an “act of love.” Vaccine hesitancy that is purportedly grounded in religious belief is in fact often rooted in political identity.  White ev...

Last week Tucker Carlson was in Hungary singing Viktor Orbán's praises, thrusting the aspiring authoritarian into the headlines again, so I wrote a piece for Haaretz  exploring the American Right's embrace of Hungary, which is often coupled with a condemnation of the United States. Basically, American conservatives, and especially religious conservatives, want the U.S. to be more like Hungary. This is bizarre for run-of-the-mill economic reasons: ...considering the matter only from a detached and coldly analytic perspective, it is a bit odd for the richest and most powerful country in the world (at least for now) to look with envy on a far less prosperous country that emerged from behind the Iron Curtain only a few decades ago. In many fields and industries, American institutions and companies lead the world in prestige and innovation, and many of the technologies that are key to humanity’s future, from electric cars to mRNA vaccines, are largely developed in the United State...

A coalition of prominent evangelical leaders published an open letter yesterday condemning Christian Nationalism. I wrote a short piece on it yesterday evening for The Square , the blog for the Religion and Its Publics project that I edit. In general, I think the letter is admirable, and I like how the writers wield the charge of heresy against the Capitol insurrectionists. I was, however, disappointed to see who did not sign the letter. I also think the statement raises the interesting matter of whether it is appropriate to question the sincerity and legitimacy of people's religious beliefs. After January 6, perhaps yes.

I wrote an op-ed for The Virginian-Pilot  on democracy and authoritarianism in a time of emergency - in this instance, the emergency occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic. It is part of the " Democracy and Pandemic " series, sponsored by the Democracy Initiative at UVA. With the election tomorrow, it is fitting to quote the final two paragraphs of the piece:  "This underscores the importance of electing leaders who are intelligent, honorable and trustworthy, or who are at least competent. One of the many reasons Donald Trump’s election alarmed so many people is that he seemed to lack even the basic qualifications to hold elected office, let alone the highest office of the land. He seemed, and has since proven to be, fundamentally incapable of governing the United States.  A sort of nihilism animated some of Trump’s supporters in 2016 — the system isn’t working, so let’s blow it up — and the pandemic has laid bare the recklessness of this way of thinking. Hopefully the c...

I recently finished a  podcast on Viktor Orbán’s Hungary and the “illiberal democracy”   he has created. The country is illiberal because the government openly favors, in both its rhetoric and policies, one set of beliefs at the expense of others. The country is a democracy because Hungary’s direction under Orbán is arguably a reflection of the will of the people. But can a country that does not support basic rights and liberties be a democracy? And why do many American religious conservatives admire Orbán, despite his authoritarian tendencies? I interviewed Andras Petho and Rod Dreher to help me find answers. Thanks to  The Religion, Race, and Democracy Lab at UVA  for production support and to the  Luce/ACLS Program in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs  for funding.

Here is another audio piece I put together for the Religion, Race, and Democracy Lab at UVA. It's related to my first podcast, Consider Hassan , and features a Greek, a Spaniard, and the enduring challenge of European stability. Click here to listen to the full piece .

Nothing grates against the ear quite like one's own voice, but here is 20 minutes of it on a podcast I helped put together for the Religion, Race, and Democracy Lab at UVA. It's an exploration of an ancient political fear, the "tyranny of the majority," but told through the story of an Iraqi refugee seeking asylum in Austria. It is a good story because of the courage of its protagonist and the skill of the Lab's producers. Click here to listen to the full episode .

Over the last several weeks, I've been putting together an annotated bibliography on religion and liberalism for the Religion and Its Publics project at UVA. The bibliography attempts to get clear on exactly what liberalism means while also exploring what critics find objectionable about it. Ultimately, I offer a "bibliography with an agenda," as I put it in the introduction, because I defend a "chastened" or "thin" liberalism as the best political arrangement we can hope for under conditions of pluralism. I am disinclined to view liberalism as good in itself because those living in liberal societies may be forced to make grave moral compromises, but it is nevertheless the best system we can hope for since it prevents even worse moral calamities, like violations of conscience that call the worthwhileness of life into question (e.g., forced conversion). Here is the bibliography's table of contents: (1) Liberalism Defined   (1a) The History of L...

A short article on Trump and moral culpability for The Square, the Religion and Its Publics blog. http://relpubs.as.virginia.edu/trump-and-the-banality-of-evil-by-evan-sandsmark/

It's my intention to have some thoughts soon.