I keep a little black book of notes, thought-sketches, and quotations. It’s my slapdash storage device for ideas. Now and then I reread the pages, and when I do I’m reminded yet again that nine tenths of mental progress comes when we circle back and think old thoughts again. Enduring truths are often fugitive. They need to be made permanent residents in our minds by regular intervals of remembrance.
Readers very likely will not be surprised that I frequently write notes to myself about the nature and mission of First Things. The magazine is something of a cipher. It has a strong Catholic dimension, but it’s certainly not merely Catholic. Furthermore, we’re religious, but more than that. First Things has an important public significance, but we don’t offer the sort of political analysis one finds in many other journals. We’re hard to pin down, which I suppose is why Ross Douthat recently recommended us among the “eccentric” journals worth reading today.
When I think about the magazine I jot down variations on a basic idea. First Things sits on a three-legged stool: theology, culture, and politics.
Theology is the most important leg. First Things wouldn’t be First Things without the first of all things, which is God’s desire to draw us to himself in love. We’re a magazine read by people who want be vital, informed, and influential participants in contemporary life. And we want to do so as men and women of faith, as men and women under God’s authority.
It’s not easy. Secularism threatens to hollow out our religious institutions from within, and lately it has been trying to push us out of the public square. That was true when the magazine was founded more than twenty years ago. So the tradition will continue. In 2013 we’ll publish essays that help us understand our theological traditions, guide our thinking about the reform and renewal of religious institutions, and analyze contemporary culture in theological terms.
We’ll do that in Catholic and Protestant ways, and in Christian and Jewish ways, and I hope in Muslim ways as well. That’s part of our eccentricity. We do what secularism says is impossible. We’re a magazine where a Jew can be a Jew. A Catholic a Catholic. A Protestant a Protestant. In his recent Christmas Address to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict explained why this is possible: “The Christian can afford to be supremely confident, yes, fundamentally certain that he can venture freely into the open sea of truth, without having to fear for his Christian identity.” The same holds for Jews and others.
The second leg is culture. Culture is the extensive array of prejudices that form our souls. It’s the public consensus about what counts as a beautiful picture or a well-designed building, what makes for an exciting new novel or compelling vision of the good life.
Our love is our weight, St. Augustine said. We are what we worship. From time immemorial, religion informed culture. But in the modern era men and women started to love and worship things not divine—autonomy, pleasure, wealth, health, and so forth. And with these changes came cultural changes.
First Things does not allow this to go uncontested. We’re in a struggle for cultural authority, a struggle over who is competent to judge what counts as true, good, and beautiful. Will it be men and women of faith, or secular elites who see religion as ugly and oppressive?
To give oneself in obedience to God’s will: This fundamental turn away from self-love humanizes us. Therefore, when it comes to culture, First Things isn’t theological, at least not in a programmatic way. Our goal is to be humane. And learned. And smart. In 2013 expect essays that interpret, weigh, and assess literature, art, architecture, history, and philosophy.
Politics provides the third leg of the First Things stool. We’re not a magazine that dwells on the latest stories from Washington, nor do we chart the rise and fall of politicians. However, faith is not just an interior reality. It’s political as well because man is a political animal, and God claims our entire lives.
Today a religious vision of human flourishing and the various secular visions are at odds, not always, but often, and perhaps more so today than ever before. Political consequences necessarily follow.
Nothing could be more fundamental than how we understand the dignity of the human person, especially when our humanity is barely visible at the beginning and end of life. First Things remains committed to the defense of life.
The Obama administration has made some new legal and constitutional arguments that have the effect of eroding religious freedom. A growing number of law professors and legal philosophers now publish articles announcing that the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty has no merit. That’s a trend that must be challenged.
Marriage is a fundamental social institution. The push to redefine marriage so that men can marry men, and women women, puts an exclamation mark on a decades-long shift in the meaning of marriage. These shifts can’t help but have political implications that will engage us in 2013 and beyond.
In my little black book I came across a quote from W. H. Auden: the “principal enemies of the True Word are two: the Idle Word and the Black Magician.” The Black Magician whispers falsehoods in our ears, tempting us to compromise when we shouldn’t, or to despair when we mustn’t. The Idle Word twiddles his thumbs as he talks about lots of things that avoid hard issues and tempt us to evade hard choices.
It is my prayer that in 2013 that we fend off these two enemies and remain true to the True Word.
R.R. Reno is Editor of First Things. He is the general editor of the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible and author of the volume on Genesis. His previous “On the Square” articles can be found here.
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Comments:
As I read this New Year’s Affirmation of Faith, I’m struck by the question: To what extent do we define ourselves by what we believe/support – and to what extent do we define ourselves by what we reject/oppose?
Some people appear to define themselves as being opposed to religion in general. While I may find appealing ideas among their thoughts, often they strike me as defensive and brittle, if not paranoid. People who say what they support – empiricism, say – strike me as more appealing.
But defining yourself in terms of what you oppose has one big advantage: you can rally people who don’t share anything in common except a common animosity toward something. Christopher Hitchens can rally the support of scientists who feel aggrieved about loss of stem-cell funding, women subjected to genital mutilation, homosexual boy scouts, and school kids who got smacked too many times by a nun – even if these people might share nothing else in common.
Similarly, people who define themselves as opposed to “secularism” often strike me as defensive and brittle, if not paranoid. Often interesting -- but less appealing that those who define themselves in terms of what they support. Yet to be too specific about what we support would risk alienating those who don’t agree with the specifics. Much safer to talk about what we oppose.
“We do what secularism says is impossible. We’re a magazine where a Jew can be a Jew. A Catholic a Catholic. A Protestant a Protestant. In his recent Christmas Address to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict explained why this is possible: ‘The Christian can afford to be supremely confident, yes, fundamentally certain that he can venture freely into the open sea of truth, without having to fear for his Christian identity.’ The same holds for Jews and others.”
First Things appeals to me for the thoughtful and PARTICULAR perspectives of its authors. I read the Pope’s remarks differently. I read him to say that a Christian should not feel defensive about her faith; she should feel free to open herself to any theological ideas – because ultimately she holds the trump cards. There IS a Truth, and she has it. And, the Pope states frankly, the Jews and Muslims (and secularist) don’t. The other guys DO have cause to fear for their identity – assuming they define themselves in terms of being Not Christian.
But, of course, no one HAS to define himself as a Jew or a Muslim, or a secularist, or a Christian – regardless of the faith we practice. We could each define ourselves as people seeking the truth in good faith. Our journeys may have led us to different conclusions for now. But so long as we remain more interested in the truth than in our group affiliations, we remain on a common task. We can sally forth as the Pope would have us do, defensive and unafraid – yea, even of those wicked secularists.
Because, ultimately, what is the purpose of this blog? What is the audience? Is this just an ammo dump, where we can reload before our next encounter with our foes in the culture wars? Or is it a place for mutual reflection, seeker to seeker, friend to friend?
A happy new year to this blog, and all who pass this way.
There are indeed references to opposition in this column ("lately it has been trying to push us out of the public square", "The Obama administration has made some new legal and constitutional arguments that have the effect of eroding religious freedom").
But the author's response is not that of a victim. A victim comes "to feel helpless and passive in the face of misfortune or ill-treatment".
Rather, the author's response is to challenge the opposition ("must be challenged" "not allow this to go uncontested"). This is not passivity or victimization but conflict (which is nothing new, by the way, cf. Matthew 10:34).
And the use of the quote from Pope Benedict ("“The Christian can afford to be supremely confident ...") suggests that, in this conflict, the author expects that the truths that the magazine defends will prevail.
