R. R. Reno

Sam Harris is the poor man’s Richard Dawkins, and he was recently at Notre Dame University to debate whether or not God is the source of morality. In an amusing and at time affecting meditation on the entire phenomenon of our Latter Day Atheists and their determined efforts to set science . . . . Continue Reading »

What makes First Things First Things? It’s a question I’ve puzzled over during the decade or so that I’ve been associated with the magazine. The question has become quite a bit more urgent for me in the last couple months. Being appointed the new editor wonderfully concentrates the mind. The first thing to say about First Things is that it stands for the conviction … . Continue Reading »

American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell Simon & Schuster, 688 pages, $30 Ah, America. Where else in the postmodern West can you find snake-handling preachers; earnest middle-aged women at Unitarian churches who talk about astrology; . . . . Continue Reading »

From the very outset of the order, people have been criticizing the Jesuits. The Society of Jesus has long tended toward extremes that raise hackles. I’m no exception, I suppose, having skewered a few of the liberal Jesuits over the years, most recently Fr. Jim Keenan and Fr. Mark Massa, a . . . . Continue Reading »

This summer will see two fine opportunities for anyone interested in the riches of the Catholic tradition. The first—a philosophy workshop on Thomas Aquinas and contemporary philosophy—will take place in late June (23rd through 26th) at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, New York. . . . . Continue Reading »

As readers will have seen, the Board of the Institute on Religion and Public life has appointed me the next editor of First Things. I’ll be working under Jim Neuchterlein over the next couple of months, trying to soak up as much of his editorial wisdom as possible before taking over on April 1st. These new responsibilities mean that this will be my last Thursday column… . Continue Reading »

Yesterday I wrote my Thursday column about the ways in which authority contributes to both natural and supernatural human flourishing. A friend wrote me to protest that, while he certainly agreed about the positive role of authority in political life, my examples of those who wrongly imagine we can . . . . Continue Reading »

Drawing on The National Marriage Project’s 2010 Report, ” When Marriage Disappears: The New Middle America ,” I’ve mused a little about divorce and the larger relations between changed social mores and increased inequalities in America, suggesting that the sexual revolution . . . . Continue Reading »

A recently released report prepared by The National Marriage Project under the direction of W. Bradford Wilcox is full of very interesting data about sex, marriage, and family life in contemporary America, some of which we’ll be ventilating in a forthcoming issue of First Things . One . . . . Continue Reading »

“We need authority to be ourselves.” So writes Victor Lee Austin in Up With Authority: Why We Need Authority to Flourish as Human Beings. Yes, that’s quite right, but there’s a further truth as well. We need authority so that we can become more than ourselves. Aside from the occasional anarchist, most acknowledge the need for some form of authority to block the worst excesses of sin… . Continue Reading »