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

Letters

Geoffrey Hill Like Garrick Davis (“Geoffrey Hill, Prodigal,” August/September), I too had the fortune of having Geoffrey Hill as an instructor. In 2004, I was a student in the Boston University writing seminars, and a few of us from the writing program took Hill’s Gerard Manley Hopkins seminar . . . . Continue Reading »

Briefly Noted

On Reading Well:  Finding the Good Life through Great Books by karen swallow prior brazos, 272 pages, $19.99 In On Reading Well, Liberty University English professor Karen Swallow Prior sets forth a thoughtful, nuanced vision of the relationship between morality and literature. This vision . . . . Continue Reading »

Common Good Conservatism

Countless commentators have observed that the public square is polarized. Political speech has become barbed. The once sober mainstream media are often shrill. It’s a sure sign of the times that people on both left and right feel under assault. Religious Americans worry that, if given a chance, . . . . Continue Reading »

Corporate Progressivism

From Tolerance to Equality:  How Elites Brought America to Same-Sex Marriage by darel e. paul baylor, 256 pages, $39.95 In 2013, the Supreme Court reversed a determination by the Internal Revenue Service that $363,053 in inheritance taxes were owed on an estate of $4.1 million. One side of the . . . . Continue Reading »

Muslims in American Politics

In the summer of 2017, something unusual happened at the Islamic Society of North America’s (ISNA) annual conference in Chicago. A table set up by Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV) in partnership with Human Rights Campaign (HRC) was removed after an ­attendee complained. The booth had been . . . . Continue Reading »

Reclaiming the Household

The decline of the family has roots in the demise of the household. While the two realities are intimately connected, they are not identical. The household is a social form, a domestic community; the family, too, is a social unit, but it shades into the purely biological fact of consanguinity. . . . . Continue Reading »

The Proper Business of Mankind

Elijah, the great scholar (Gaon) of Vilna in the eighteenth century, is synonymous with total devotion to Torah study above all other pursuits. Paradoxically, because he held that deficiency in mundane wisdom leads to deficient understanding of God’s word, he has also become an emblem for . . . . Continue Reading »

Filter Tag Articles