First Thoughts

#BringBack OurChristians

The West sees Boko Haram as anti-women. But that’s a relatively minor part of the story. Boko Haram is not principally anti-women, but anti-Christian. 
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The Difference Three Percent Makes

According to the Planned Parenthood, just 3 percent of its services are abortion related. So why are so many clinics closing? Continue Reading »

On the Feast Day of St. Bonaventure

Today marks the feast day of St. Bonaventure, the seraphic doctor. Unlike Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure represents the synthesis of medieval Augustinian mysticism. For this reason, he can be particularly challenging to interpret. Reading him is worth the labor. In Bonaventure one glimpses the . . . . Continue Reading »

First Links — 7.15.14

The State of the American Dog
Tom Junod, Esquire

And Now: The Criminalization of Parenthood
Radley Balko, Washington Post

The Culture Warrior in Winter
Tiffany Stanley, National Journal

Books Are Alive
Ned Resnikoff, The Baffler

Cool Istanbul
Kate Havard, Weekly Standard

In Memoriam: Christopher Mitchell

Christopher W. Mitchell was a scholar of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien who directed The Wade Center at Wheaton College for many years. Wesley Hill remembers him as a good friend. Continue Reading »

First Links — 7.14.14

God Lives on Lemon Street
Scott Cheshire, Harper’s

Virginia Woolf’s Idea of Privacy
Joshua Rothman, New Yorker

In Defense of Fanny Price
Tara Isabella Burton, Paris Review

Carrie White Will Never Die
Eve Tushnet, American Conservative

The Tea Party’s New Front in the American Culture Wars: Literature
Adam Kirsch, Tablet

Hamilton’s Religion, and Ours

On the 210th anniversary of the most famous duel in American history, some reflections on America’s public religion. Continue Reading »

What Explains the Reaction to Hobby Lobby?

Why all the vitriol? Why all the talk of coercion?  Continue Reading »

First Links — 7.11.14

Vatican Says There Will Be No “Two Popes Final” for the World Cup
The Straits Times

‘Human Props’ Stay in Luxury Homes but Live like Ghosts
Drew Harwell, Tampa Bay Times

Describing a Visual World Without Vision
Jessica Love, The American Scholar

The Mortality of Paper
Elizabeth Yale, The Atlantic

The Race to Stop Africa’s Elephant Poachers
Joshua Hammer, Smithsonian Magazine

The Logic of Contraceptive Rights

Dissenting opinions in the Hobby Lobby case and the editorials penned in reaction to the Wheaton injunction fixate on reproductive rights. Specifically, many argue that women have an incontrovertible right to the full breadth of contraceptive care, including IUDs and the morning after pill (everything approved by the FDA). To assert a right, though, is not to establish it—and these assertions cannot withstand scrutiny. Continue Reading »