Archive

In London this summer, I walked past a pub sign near Trafalgar Square that read “Fully Air Conditioned. Serving Cold Beers.” Turning to my wife, I laughed: “I truly...

Leslie Poles Hartley famously dubbed the past “a foreign country.” This summer, for the first time, I sensed that the present can be one too. My annual visit to...

Darel Paul’s excellent First Things article on the Jason Arday scandal pinpoints a number of the problems now rife in academia, problems that I can attest are so well-established...

On July 25, twenty-one-year-old Abdul Ballout drove a van into a crowd at Berlin’s Pride festival before stabbing attendees with a machete. One woman was killed and twenty-nine people...

The United Methodist Church (UMC) has removed Asbury Theological Seminary from its list of institutions approved to train its ministers. Hardly a bastion of right-wing Protestant fundamentalism, Asbury has...

Buckingham Palace has updated the official description of the monarch’s role vis-à-vis the Church of England. No longer is the king the “Defender of the Faith”; rather, “His Majesty...

H. Richard Niebuhr famously denounced the liberal church of his day, summarizing its theology in a single withering sentence: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a...

In a recent New York Times guest essay, Catholic writer David Gibson praised Pope Leo for moving his church away from “pelvic theology.” For those unfamiliar with the term, it is a way of dismissing those concerned...

Although I have been on loan to Notre Dame at the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government this year, I returned to Grove City College to take part in...

Another well-known minister has resigned from his pastoral office due to a previously undisclosed inappropriate relationship. The twist in this grimly familiar tale is that he had largely built...

Prior to the November 2024 election, transgender issues loomed large for many parents, who feared the erosion of parental rights regarding their children’s “gender identity.” The phrase “They are...

My new book, The Desecration of Man, emerged from something I had noticed while researching questions...

Regular First Things readers will know that one of my preoccupations is the dehumanization that grips our cultural moment, from the casual abuse that right and left hurl at...

It is fascinating to be an outsider on the inside of an institution going through times of trouble. It is akin to having a backstage pass to a Police...

This past week, I read three things that offered a glimpse of how empty the modern notion of what it means to be human really is. The first was...