Dear Reader,

I probably don’t know you, but I’m willing to bet you and I share something in common. Chances are, we have both felt the presence of a rarely welcome but unyieldingly persistent houseguest. In my experience, this guest’s visits are not all cut from the same cloth. Some days, it comes bearing troubling words and prophecies. On others, it is content to simply offer a long, unnerving gaze—to pull up its favorite chair, lean back, and take up space as I go about my day, obliquely pretending I don’t notice it. 

Your most intuitive name for this guest may differ from mine. Indeed, I think I know it by several. When I’m feeling particularly analytical and root-cause-oriented, “uncertainty” fits the bill. In more contemplative and unguarded moments, I become open to the language of “doubt.” Maybe you have your own words, or maybe this visitor carries itself differently around you. Perhaps, were I to visit your home, I wouldn’t immediately recognize it as the same guest I know so well. Yet I imagine, underneath the surface, that there is a thread between our experiences. By virtue of our humanity, we have both encountered doubt.

In this issue, we meditate on such encounters, particularly as they intersect with spiritual terrain. Kurt Armstrong takes us through his intellectual awakening sparked by the study of sociology, a transformation that also happened to throw everything he learned in his faith-based upbringing into question. From the other end of the academic spectrum, Hayden Kvamme explores parallels between two searches in his life: one for the foundations of mathematics, and the other for those of religious belief. 

While such interrogations of knowledge frequently accompany doubt, our emotional life as humans can also play a strong role in its development. In both spheres, how do we negotiate the weight we give to our doubts, and is there any way forward while doubt remains a presence? Emily Carter unpacks these questions and more as she relates her journey away from, and back to, faith. Finally, Wyatt Reynolds invites us to consider, through the lens of Dorothy Sayers’s writing, what resources might be available to us to address existential doubt.

Vulnerable engagement with doubt is always a risk—but it also has the potential to be one of the most humanizing and, paradoxically, rewarding things we do. We hope, reader, that these reflections create space for you to further consider how doubt has visited you, and how your relationship with this unique companion may continue to evolve in the future.

Fare Forward,

Jake Casale

Editor