The Church’s Gender Gap Problem
When I was growing up, it wasn’t uncommon to hear women bemoan their husbands’ absence from church. I remember scanning the pews of St. Peter’s in Plattsburgh, New York,…
May 2026
Print Edition
May 2026 Print Edition
America’s Most Influential Journal of Religion and Public Life
When the Bells Stop Ringing
God and Man at MIT
The pamphleteers are hard to miss. They stand in front of the big doors of Lobby 7,…
Faith-Based Failures
On January 24, 2025, Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff was sentenced to seventeen years in prison for his role…
Return of the Nobles
Here, perhaps, is the greatest problem we face these days: Everything is full. Saunter over to your…
Why Me?
I visited a friend of mine a few years ago. He was a deeply faithful theologian, but without…
The Twisted Consequences of Chatbots
The Education of Cole Tomas Allen
This essay will appear in the upcoming June/July issue of First Things. The most terrifying and telling…
How the SPLC Got into America’s Classrooms
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been indicted for a variety of crimes. To laymen, the…
Charles and Trump’s Very Special Relationship
Amid rampant speculation about what King Charles would say and do on his state visit to the…
Microplastics in Our Souls
The Last Men:Liberalism and the Death of Masculinityby charles cornish-daleregnery, 288 pages, $32.99 Charles Cornish-Dale, who posts…
Recovering the University’s Soul
The contemporary university is widely acknowledged to be in crisis. Loss of public confidence, relentless tuition increases,…
How Science Killed Materialism
At the beginning of the twentieth century, materialists could feel triumphant. The four preceding centuries had yielded…
The Savannah Enlightenment
In 1716, a remarkable commoner by the name of James Oglethorpe took a leave of absence from…
The West Distorted
G. K. Chesterton’s novel The Flying Inn begins with a strange seaside encounter involving one Misysra Ammon,…
Ratzinger in the Whirlwind
Joseph Ratzinger did not fade into obscurity when he retired to a life of prayer inside the…
A Whole New World
I remember wondering, one idle summer when I was a child, why God had made the world so…
Godson
I doubt you’ll be a simple kind of manbut listen to the song. It’s a good plan.…
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place with Wifi
As waiters glide across the room,espresso steams beside my bookon the small, round table.The low purl of…
The No / The Yes
Nothing terrifies more than the Noyour lover whispers through a closed door:You may die for all I…
The Crisis of Conservative Judaism
The institutions of Conservative Judaism—its synagogues, its summer camps, its youth organizations, its sisterhoods and men’s organizations,…
I Want Life, Not the “Meaning of Life”
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a posthumous but vivid presence at this publication through his friendship with Fr.…
God and Gender in Judaism
Some time this year the Reform movement will issue its new High Holy Day prayerbook, for the…
Spirituality Without Spirits
It’s a great and self-serving mess, this claim to be “spiritual but not religious,” which we hear…
The Problem with Salad Bowl Religion
I wonder what my rebbe ancestors would think of me,” writes a young Unitarian Universalist minister in…
Between Liberalism and Orthodoxy
Beyond Reasonable Doubtby louis jacobslittman library of jewish civilizations, 267 pages, $32.95 In 1957, Louis Jacobs, a…
