R. R. Reno

2011”my first full year at First Things, and my first year as Editor. During the quiet days after Christmas I found myself paging through the year’s issues. There’s a lot to savor. Here are some of my favorites. “The Man-Made Messiah” (January). It’s the Lubavitcher rebbe, Manachem Mendel Schneerson whose followers stand outside the “mitzvah tanks” (the RV style trucks that blare klezmer music) on the eve of major Jewish holiday, asking passers-bye, “Are you Jewish?” … Continue Reading »

You really have to check out this very clever and well-done video, The Fight of the Century . I’m not a fan of rap music, but it’s a supremely verbal musical idiom that works well with the substance of this music video, which is the difference between F. A. Hayek’s free market . . . . Continue Reading »

Once animated by revolutionary ardor, our secular intellectuals have reached a dead end. Today they pen books that reassure the powerful, providing a justifying mythology for America’s ruling elite. That’s the only reasonable way to read The Swerve: How the World Became Modern , a new . . . . Continue Reading »

Christianity has long been susceptible to antinomian temptations. St. Paul’s pointed and often rhetorically violent rejections of the role of Jewish law in the lives of Jesus’ Gentile followers are difficult to untangle, and it is easy to fall back upon simple juxtapositions between law and . . . . Continue Reading »

Dear Readers and Friends, Our end-of-the year fund drive is well underway, … Continue Reading »

Over at the New York Times “Room for Debate” page, Tim Shah and Tom Farr observe that our liberal counterparts are often tempted to define democratic culture as, well, liberals talking the way liberals talk . Drawing from Barack Obama’s meditations on the role of faith in public . . . . Continue Reading »

You can imagine my surprise this Christmas weekend when I discovered an essay on ancient and medieval spiritual theology in the Sunday Book Review section of the New York Times . In “The Noonday Demons, and Ours,” Brandeis English professor John Plotz reminds us that temptations toward . . . . Continue Reading »

I owe George Pell, the Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney, and our readers an apology for subjecting him and you to a dreary and bilious rant. George Weigel recently wrote an appreciated column about Cardinal Pell, one of the most articulate spokesmen for the Christian faith in the English-speaking world. Our readers weighed in with their usual insight and intelligence, but someone whose moniker is “Voiceless Victim” made defamatory and false remarks regarding the Cardinal… . Continue Reading »

Patrick Reilly and Rick Garnett mix it up over how best to respond to the aggressive way that Kathleen Sebelius at the Department of Health and Human Services has crafted regulations that stipulate what employers must include in the health insurance policies they provide. The long and the . . . . Continue Reading »

The rise of Newt Gingrich is extraordinary: a card-carrying member of the permanent governing class in Washington embraced by the conservative base of the Republican Party. I would have never imagined it possible. But these are remarkable, even desperate times. Many Republican Party voters feel that when it comes to government spending we have reached a now-or-never moment… . Continue Reading »