Erasmus Lectures
This seminal, annual event showcases First Things’s role as America’s most influential journal on religion and public life.
The inaugural First Things Erasmus Lecture convened in 1985 as a gathering of men and women Rev. Richard John Neuhaus believed would help shape a modern Christian humanistic approach to culture, education, and the Church.
Today, speakers are chosen according to their influence and significance to important debates in the public square and in leading society toward transcendent truth.
Previous Erasmus lecturers include Bishop Robert Barron, Ross Douthat, Mary Ann Glendon, and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
For the full list of Erasmus honorees and links to their lectures, please see below. To attend this year’s Erasmus Lecture, visit our Events page.
- 2025: Bishop Erik Varden, “In Praise of Translation”
- 2024: Paul Kingsnorth, “Against Christian Civilization”
- 2023: Carl R. Trueman, “The Desecration of Man”
- 2022: Anthony Fisher, “The West: Post- or Pre-Christian?”
- 2021: Wilfred McClay, “The Claims of Memory”
- 2020: Meir Soloveitchik, “Lincoln’s Almost Chosen People”
- 2019: N. T. Wright, “Loving to Know”
- 2018: Rémi Brague, “God as a Gentleman”
- 2017: Robert Barron, “Evangelizing the Nones”
- 2016: Russell D. Moore, “Can the Religious Right Be Saved?”
- 2015: Ross Douthat, “A Crisis of Conservative Catholicism”
- 2014: Charles Chaput, “Strangers in a Strange Land”
- 2013: Jonathan Sacks, “On Creative Minorities”
- 2012: Jean Bethke Elshtain, “On Loyalty”
- 2011: Gilbert Meilaender, “A Complete Life”
- 2010: J. H. H. Weiler, “The Trial of Jesus”
- 2008: Robert Wilken, “Christianity Face to Face with Islam”
- 2007: Robert George, “Law and Moral Purpose”
- 2006: Philip Jenkins, “Believing in the Global South”
- 2005: Timothy George, “Evangelicals and Others”
- 2004: Timothy Cardinal Dolan, “The Bishops in Council”
- 2003: Dana Gioia, “The Catholic Writer Today”
- 2002: Stephen Barr, “Retelling the Story of Science”
- 2001: David Novak, “Jews, Christians, and Civil Society”
- 2000: George Weigel, “Papacy and Power”
- 1999: Charles Colson, “Modernist Impasse, Christian Opportunity”
- 1998: Oliver O’Donovan, “Government as Judgement”
- 1997: Clarence Thomas
- 1996: Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”
- 1995: Midge Decter, “A Jew in Anti-Christian America”
- 1994: Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Christianity and the West”
- 1992: Mary Ann Glendon, “Tradition and Creativity in Culture and Law”
- 1991: Leon Kass, “Man and Woman: An Old Story”
- 1990: Robertson Davies, “Literature and Moral Purposes”
- 1988: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis”
- 1987: Peter Berger
- 1986: John T. Noonan Jr.
- 1985: Paul Johnson, “An Almost Chosen People”
