Two Pro-Life Goals for 2026
The second Trump administration has been marked by wins on what we might dub “cultural” conservatism—ending DEI in the federal government, cracking down on immigration, protecting women’s sports, rolling…
January 2026
Print Edition
January 2026 Print Edition
America’s Most Influential Journal of Religion and Public Life
Tucker and the Right
Goddity
The Nativity of our Lord—born an infant, laid in a manger. It’s an utterly strange story: The…
Dark Phantoms
It happened quickly, so quickly that you’d think it was impossible to retain the image. The Ohio…
Work Is for the Worker
In these early days of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV has made one thing clear: The responsible…
Just Stop It
Earlier this summer, Egypt’s Ministry of Religious Endowments launched a new campaign. It is entitled “Correct Your…
The First Things Podcast
Heritage and the Right
Conversations
America’s Iron Men (ft. Matthew Spalding)
The Editor’s Desk
The Church of Sarah Mullally (ft. Damian Thompson)
Wassailing at Christmas
Two Pro-Life Goals for 2026
The second Trump administration has been marked by wins on what we might dub “cultural” conservatism—ending DEI…
A Nonsectarian Version of the Ten Commandments
Over the past two years, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas passed laws requiring posters of the Ten Commandments…
Another Year, Another Book Stack
Lists, lists, lists—how they proliferate. But it just so happens that I love lists, and have done…
Against the Doctrine of Double Truth
The greatest danger I perceive to the new evangelization of the West, including of Germany, is the…
Practitioners of Infanticide
A physician declares his dying patient—a seven-pound baby boy—“dangerous as dynamite,” a “menace to society.” A routine…
Caravaggio and Us
Nicolas Poussin, the greatest French artist of the seventeenth century, once said that Caravaggio had come into…
In Praise of Translation
The circumstances of my life have been such that I have moved, since adolescence, in a borderland…
Shakespeare and the City
Recently I checked into a pleasant, fairly sterile Marriott in Shoreditch ahead of my London debut as…
Make Me A Lutheran
John Fisher, the renowned Bishop of Rochester, is known to history chiefly for having been put to…
Hegemon or Empire?
Was the First Gulf War a mistake? The historian Paul Schroeder thought the answer was “yes.” In…
Canticle of All Creatures
This poem was written by St. Francis of Assisi, and translated by Dana Gioia. Most high, all…
Address Book
The leather binding, torn and askew,is barely joined by brittle pieces of Scotch tape. And the names…
The Ruin
Remorseless sun stunts the dew Glistening towers of tainted glassignite and blister …
Empathy is Not Charity
Martin Scorsese’s recent film Silence, like the historical novel by Shūsaku Endō on which it is based,…
The Sacred Heart of Victor Hugo
The Temptation of the Impossible: Victor Hugo and Les Misérables By Mario Vargas Llosa Princeton University Press,…
The Whole World Groans
St. Jerome, angry over the protracted Arian crisis and the apparent victory of the “semi-Arians” at the…
Christianity and Poetry
I When I became a man, I put away childish things.—St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 13 Most Christians…
My Madness
My brother Peter was a wondrous boy, the youngest, brightest, and bounciest of three kids: IQ 165,…
Shakespeare, Four Centuries On
This Saturday, April 23rd, marks an important anniversary: four hundred years since the death of William Shakespeare.…
