Time to Say Goodbye

Three years ago this month First Things launched this blog to provide a space for a broad range of evangelical viewpoints. We’ve had dozens of contributors, more than 1,500 posts, and nearly 20,000 comments. But today it’s time for us to say goodbye. Group blogs that have numerous . . . . Continue Reading »

Religious Freedom: A Natural Right?

Hadley Arkes, a member of the First Things advisory council, spots a problem in our current discussions of the right to religious freedom. On Right Reason he points out : We cannot insist on the one hand that our judgments on law and public policy are formed of moral reasoning and the Natural Law . . . . Continue Reading »

Ecclesiastical Art, So-Called

Some of you will have seen this, but I send it along since some of you haven’t (I hadn’t, as far as I remember, but then one’s mind blanks out such things). Your submissions make Baby Jesus cry offers fifty examples of failed attempts at ecclesiastical art. Many of them make me . . . . Continue Reading »

On the Square Today

Timothy George on Reformation Day : It was around two o’clock in the afternoon on the eve of the Day of All Saints, October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther, hammer in hand, approached the main north door of the  Schlosskirche  (Castle Church) in Wittenberg and nailed up his Ninety-Five . . . . Continue Reading »

Cheating As a Human Right

I’ve written before about how international human rights law increasingly reflects the norms of the so-called WEIRD countries – that’s Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic – and assumes that those norms must be honored across the globe. This assumption is going . . . . Continue Reading »

Methodological Debates

Michael J. New highlights a methodological limitation in a recent abortion study promoted by Amanda Marcotte and others: A medical student contacted the authors of the study to ask how they obtained pregnancy and abortion data from study participants. As it turns out, the researchers used telephone . . . . Continue Reading »