First Things RSS Feed - Barton Swaim https://www.firstthings.com/author/barton-swaim en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:53:52 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/barton-swaim 60 Invisible President https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/06/invisible-president https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/06/invisible-president Thu, 01 Jun 2017 00:00:00 -0400 We Are the Change We Seek:
The Speeches of Barack Obama
 edited by e. j. dionne jr. and joy-ann reid
 bloomsbury, 376 pages, $25

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]]> Boomer Pharisaism https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/10/boomer-pharisaism https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/10/boomer-pharisaism Sat, 01 Oct 2016 02:00:00 -0400 I live in a capital city. As in every capital in America, the city’s chief business is government. Government agencies are everywhere—large and powerful ones, small and unnecessary ones; departments, commissions, boards, authorities. Nearly every one of these entities has its own public information officer, or PIO, a person whose job it is to explain the agency’s acts to the public. In most cases, these PIOs don’t actually do much of anything, for the simple reason that the public usually doesn’t care very much what the agency does. The occasional press release and response to a Freedom of Information Act request are about all that’s required of these “communications” specialists.

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]]> Stott Bowdlerized https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/05/stott-bowdlerized https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/05/stott-bowdlerized Sun, 01 May 2016 00:00:00 -0400 R

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]]> Varieties of Religious Certitude https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2007/03/varieties-of-religious-certitu https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2007/03/varieties-of-religious-certitu Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500 In a recent essay in the Times Literary Supplement , Steven Weinberg suggested that the reason the West has so far outstripped the Islamic world in scientific knowledge is "religious certitude." In the West, the decline of religion has freed science to move forward at an astonishing pace. As evidence of the decline of religious certitude in the West, he cites his own experience.

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