Support First Things by turning your adblocker off or by making a  donation. Thanks!

The Things that Remain: An Episcopalian’s Credo

Fifteen years ordained and still serving in the parish. Still switching on the coffee at dawn Sunday mornings, still putting out the chairs for midweek Bible study, still riding with the youth group on ski trips. Still visiting at the hospital, still living with difficult people on the Vestry, still . . . . Continue Reading »

Populist Protestantism

The Democratization of American Christianity by nathan hatch yale university press, 312 pages, $25 In 1802 a flamboyant Baptist preacher named John Leland presented a twelve-hundred pound “mammoth cheese” to Thomas Jefferson at a White House ceremony. Molded in a cider press from the milk of . . . . Continue Reading »

Back to Fundamentals

The Fundamentalist Phenomenon: A View from Within; A Response from Without edited by norman j. cohen eerdmans, 266 pages, $14.95This volume, containing sixteen essays (including the useful introduction by editor Norman Cohen), constitutes a valuable reference source on American Protestant and other . . . . Continue Reading »

The Soul of the American University

Our subject is one of those peculiar phenomena taken for granted in the contemporary world but which from an historical perspective seem anomalous. The phenomenon is that the huge numbers of Protestants in the United States support almost no distinctively Christian program in higher education other . . . . Continue Reading »

Toward a Christian Critique of the Arts

Sham Pearls for Real Swine by franky schaeffer wolgemuth & hyatt, 290 pages, $14.95 In 1948, a young American minister from the conservative Bible Presbyterian Church moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, to serve as a missionary to Europe. Intending lo work primarily as an evangelist, this earnest . . . . Continue Reading »

The Christian West?

Richard John Neuhaus: 1992 is scheduled to he a very big year for moving toward European unity. Specifics will be changed as a result of the Revolution of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe, and especially in light of German reunification, but the continuing move toward European unity seems to be . . . . Continue Reading »

The Social History of American Religion

Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People by jon butler harvard university press, 360 pages, $29.50  Jon Butler’s Awash in a Sea of Faith is the most ambitious and successful effort to date to link the social or behavioral history of American religion with that of medieval . . . . Continue Reading »

Filter Tag Articles