Support First Things by turning your adblocker off or by making a  donation. Thanks!

David Mills is former executive editor of First Things.

RSS Feed

African Belief

From First Thoughts

The BBC supplies Ten Things We have Learnt About Africa , summarizing a Pew report on sub-Saharan African religious and moral beliefs, and their material well-being as well. Religious belief was unsurprisingly high — roughly 80% believing in God in some way — though that is not an unmixed . . . . Continue Reading »

Kicking Children

From First Thoughts

Prospective parents may be interested in the New Scientist series  ”Bumpology, ” the latest entry of which is  Active Fetus, Boisterous Child? Uh-Oh . The scientific findings “are inconsistent,” the writer reports, but I know that our first and third were calm . . . . Continue Reading »

An Even Bitterer Pill

From First Thoughts

Readers of Timothy Reichert’s  Bitter Pill , just published in the May issue, may also be interested in  The Pill’s Deadly Affair with HIV/AIDS by Joan Claire Robinson of the Population Research Institute. In it she argues that “Hormonal contraceptives increase almost . . . . Continue Reading »

Archbishop Chaput Explains the Obvious

From First Thoughts

In Kennedy Case. The Bishop Flunks the Professor , the Italian journalist Sandro Magister traces the debate between Charles Chaput, the Archbishop of Denver, and an Italian sociologist and advisor to the Italian bishops, over the incoherence of President Kennedy’s famous and very damaging, . . . . Continue Reading »

Orientale Lumen

From First Thoughts

Those interested in learning more about Eastern Christianity, Catholic and Orthodox, may be interested in this year’s Orientale Lumen conferences , being held in early June through early July. There are three this year, one at Seton Hall University in northern New Jersey, one in Washington, . . . . Continue Reading »

Not So Easy to Identify an Evangelical

From First Thoughts

The Evangelical magazine Christianity Today reports on the latest event to highlight the divisions in Evangelicalism. In Piper, Warren, and the Perils of Movement Building , Collin Hansen reports that John Piper, a leader of the overtly Reformed or Calvinist movement, invited Rick Warren, a leader . . . . Continue Reading »

Cambodia’s Horror, and China’s

From First Thoughts

A reminder of a great evil, which began thirty-five years ago, in Lest We Forget: April 17, 1975 , by Var Hong Ashe. Just a few hours after the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh, our misery started. The Khmer Rouge ordered us to leave the city “for three hours only” and to carry nothing . . . . Continue Reading »

Louts in Parks

From First Thoughts

Last Friday, the Philadelphia Daily News reported that a  Boorish fan intentionally vomits on cop’s kid at a Phillies game. It’s one of those stories that even now leave you shaking your head. First a group of louts abused the family in front of them, then one spat on one of the . . . . Continue Reading »