First Things RSS Feed - Joseph R. Gregory https://www.firstthings.com/author/joseph-r-gregory en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:52:54 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/joseph-r-gregory 60 Ukraine: Christians in Conflict https://www.firstthings.com/article/1997/03/ukraine-christians-in-conflict https://www.firstthings.com/article/1997/03/ukraine-christians-in-conflict Sat, 01 Mar 1997 00:00:00 -0500 Kiev is a place whose buildings suggest that the time is out of joint. The decrepit concrete of the city’s massive housing blocks humbly admit the failure of communism. The cross-topped, golden onion domes of its monasteries and churches tell of ancient traditions and enduring strengths. And the city’s brassy new casinos and strip-bars boldly announce that the free market has liberated once-repressed vices. Today, more than five years after Ukraine declared independence from a splintering Soviet Union, Kiev is a cross between Chicago in the 1920s and Rome in the days of the Avignon Papacy––with scheming clergymen and angry churchgoers, ruthless gangsters and hard-eyed cops, corrupt officials, nouveau-riche businessmen, struggling workers, easy mores, and a sense that the future is up for grabs.

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]]> African Slavery 1996 https://www.firstthings.com/article/1996/05/african-slavery-1996 https://www.firstthings.com/article/1996/05/african-slavery-1996 Wed, 01 May 1996 00:00:00 -0400 A slave is a person perverted into a thing,” wrote Coleridge as the movement to stop the African slave trade was gaining momentum early in the nineteenth century. “Slavery, therefore, is not so properly a deviation from justice as an absolute subversion of all morality.”

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