It was at this point, at the very end of the Church year, inspired by a tremulous confidence and the irresistible attraction of first love, that I established the habit of going to daily Mass. Every day at noon when the bells of St. Mary’s were ringing out the Angelus over New Haven, I drove into . . . . Continue Reading »
Plutarch tells us that Gaius Gracchus (154–121 b.c.) devoted his life to civic reform, while Cato the Younger (95–46 b.c.) would “rather compete in valor with the best, than in wealth with the richest or the most covetous in love of money.” Impressive in both cases, no doubt, but what are . . . . Continue Reading »
Islam,” Mustafa Akyol writes in his latest book, “is not the powerful, creative, sophisticated, beautiful civilization that it once was.” Instead, Akyol argues in Reopening Muslim Minds, Islam is in a crisis, a crisis that cannot simply be blamed on Western colonialism or imperialism. . . . . Continue Reading »
We Jews know death. Leaf through the Talmud, that treasure trove of rabbinic wisdom, lore, and law, and you’ll find the grim reaper loafing about on every other page, inspiring scores of intricate debates about what precisely we must do when faced with the Great Unfathomable. Judaism gives us no . . . . Continue Reading »
It was the beach house that got to me this time. When the priest abuse scandals broke in early 2002, inaugurating what Richard John Neuhaus called our “Long Lent,” I had been ordained for less than two years. My initial reaction was shock and anger. Even after the U.S. bishops had promised in . . . . Continue Reading »
Small wars, the kind that pit a superpower against an apparently overmatched enemy, are easy to slip into and can be hard to get out of. But it need not always be so. The British in their imperial magnificence at the turn of the twentieth century fought wars against Islamic fanatics on the northwest . . . . Continue Reading »
For many of today’s students, the ideas of Adorno, Foucault, Barthes, and the rest are practically indigestible; the long hours required to understand these thinkers are drudgery. But for a brief period in the twentieth century, the act of reading them was downright religious, the air in the . . . . Continue Reading »
Going to a concert, like going to church or a nice restaurant or traveling on a plane or an overnight train, once meant dressing up and looking your best. We had been taught that dressing up showed respect—and classical music evoked special respect. This had little to do with how much one . . . . Continue Reading »
From the opening declaration that “biblical interpretation is not a historical discipline,” it is clear that Hans Boersma is addressing scholars committed to viewing the Bible as Scripture. Many biblical scholars do not share this commitment, and many who do were not trained in graduate school . . . . Continue Reading »
A man does tireof beingcold. He nears the fire.But beingtold, he lets expirethe BeingBold. —Matthew T. . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
