Ben Wray

Is our work merely a way to put food on the table, or does it have inherent value? Should our work define us? Does it play too large a role in our lives? Does it make us feel more human, or less so? This issue explores the realities of work for people with various jobs, but also probes the reasons people work and what they hope to gain from their labor. From warehouse workers to poets, food delivery specialists to cloistered nuns, farmers to police officers, this issue considers personal, spiritual, and social aspects of one of the most basic human activities. On this theme: James Rebanks prepares to pass on the farm to his children. Benoit Gautier rides a shuttlebus with dislocated French warehouse workers. Shira Telushkin asks why young women today are becoming cloistered nuns. Ben Wray talks to food-delivery riders in three countries about their attempts to organize. John Clair, a police chief, wants policing to be about relationships, not statistics. Norann Voll tells how her father taught her to embrace her blue-collar roots. Maureen Swinger honors the unpaid and unheralded work of caring for an aging loved one. Alastair Roberts recommends the divine rhythm of work and Sabbath rest God established in Genesis. Also in this issue: Adam Nicolson finds a different sort of freedom sailing a sixteen-foot wooden boat. Alister McGrath explores the connection between detective fiction and the spiritual quest. Tish Harrison Warren introduces Stanley Hauerwas to new audiences. Christian Wiman shares a new poem about a glass-eyed monk. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to apply their faith to the challenges we face. Each issue includes in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art.

Since the referendum, Scottish independence has been captured by conservative forces. Scotland After Britain argues for fidelity to the true meaning of the word independence. It should mean not only a break from the failing British state, but also from the prison of free trade and militarism that has delivered successive crises. Most of all, independence must honestly address the huge injustices of income, wealth and power that continue to define Scottish society, by restoring agency to working class communities and voters. Scotland After Britain shines a spotlight on pro-independence politics since Brexit and the pandemic. The Scottish national question has emerged as the biggest fracture in the British state after Brexit. The independence movement emerged from mass public disenchantment at the status quo, yet the SNP continues governing as if that disenchantment never happened, and the party leadership appears increasingly ambivalent about the risks of demanding independence. Most of all, the British state remains hostile to allowing a second referendum, while the SNP leadership has been unwilling to sanction protest beyond the ballot box. Where do we go from here? Scotland After Britain argues Brexit could force the movement to engage in a reckoning with the true stakes of independence, a process that will inevitably require a breach with the SNP's establishment vision.