First Things RSS Feed - Grant Kaplan https://www.firstthings.com/author/grant-kaplan en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:55:23 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/grant-kaplan 60 From Religion to Politics https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/11/from-religion-to-politics https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/11/from-religion-to-politics Wed, 01 Nov 2023 00:00:00 -0400 The Religious Revolution:
The Birth of Modern Spirituality, 1848–98
by dominic green
farrar, straus and giroux,  464 pages, $35

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]]> Secularism as Sexism https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/08/secularism-as-sexism https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/08/secularism-as-sexism Sat, 01 Aug 2020 06:00:00 -0400 Sex and Secularism
by joan wallach scott
princeton, 240 pages, $27.95

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]]> Döllinger’s Unquiet Grave https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/12/dllingers-unquiet-grave https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/12/dllingers-unquiet-grave Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0500 The Pope and the Professor:
Pius IX, Ignaz von Döllinger, and the Quandary of the Modern Age
 by thomas howard
 oxford, 312 pages, $45

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]]> A Castle of Thought https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/07/a-castle-of-thought https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/07/a-castle-of-thought Tue, 11 Jul 2017 06:00:00 -0400 The Fragility of Consciousness: Faith, Reason, and the Human Good
by frederick lawrence
university of toronto press, 456 pages, $95

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]]> The Da Vinci Code All Over Again https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/06/the-da-vinci-code-all-over-again https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/06/the-da-vinci-code-all-over-again Tue, 21 Jun 2016 11:25:00 -0400 Last Thursday, my Facebook feed alerted me to a fascinating piece of investigative journalism, published the previous day by The Atlantic . The article details Ariel Sabar’s exposure of the provenance of a Coptic papyrus that, some say, proves that Jesus was married. Sabar demonstrates that it is almost certainly a fake.

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]]> Celibacy as Political Resistance https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/01/celibacy-as-political-resistance https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/01/celibacy-as-political-resistance Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 -0500 Just weeks before the 2012 election, in a discussion held in the gymnasium of a small Midwestern Catholic college, the college’s president asked everyone to stand, turned to the large American flag hanging from the rafters, and asked the crowd to recite the Pledge of Allegiance with him. For him, such a gesture seemed the natural or obvious thing to do. But will, or, more importantly, should the next generation of Christian leaders share the same zeal to affirm American civil religion?

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]]> An Interview with René Girard https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2008/11/an-interview-with-rene-girard https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2008/11/an-interview-with-rene-girard Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500 René Girard is one of the most important Christian intellectuals of our time. Beginning with the publication of Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (1961), Girard’s thought began making waves in a number of disciplines. His first work impacted literary criticism with a basic and revolutionary idea: that the structure of desire is mimetic or learned. This insight cut against the modern trend to emphasize autonomous desire. With the publication of Violence and the Sacred (1970), Girard extended his thesis into ethnology, anthropology, and the study of myth. From his research Girard unfolded a theory that placed religion at the very basis of a culture’s foundation.

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