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Alexi Sargeant is assistant editor of First Things. He studied English and Theater at Yale University, graduating in 2015. He has written for the American Conservative, Commonweal, New Criterion, and Aleteia, and his plays have been performed in Philadelphia and at Yale. He previously served as the Junior Fellow at First Things.

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Songs of Exile

From First Thoughts

Where has all the dark Christian music gone? It doesn’t take much listening to notice how blithe and breezy popular Christian music has become. At the data journalism site FiveThirtyEight, Leah Libresco has run the numbers and found that the lyrics of recent Christian hits skew towards life, . . . . Continue Reading »

Saintly Defiance on Stage

From First Thoughts

Franz Jägerstätter, born in 1907, led a wild youth in Austria, turned to God after fearing he had killed another man in a fight, and settled down with a wife to run a farm and father children. In 1943, he refused the draft out of a conviction that a Catholic could not fight for Nazism. Defying the entreaties of mother, neighbors, priest, and bishop, he went to the guillotine. Even after the war, Jägerstätter’s countrymen called him a traitor and denied his widow, Franziska, and their three daughters any aid. Only in 2007 was Jägerstätter beatified by Benedict XVI. . . . Continue Reading »