A controversy has erupted in the past week over a keynote delivered by Richard Swinburne at the most recent Midwest meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers. We at First Things were curious about the paper that prompted all the to-do, and so we asked Professor Swinburne to let us make his paper available. He has generously agreed. Continue Reading »
Plato’s Bedroom succeeds by starting outside of religion, by unsettling all of us, showing us why our erotic lives are so important and problematic, so beautiful and at the same time potentially destructive, why love and death are never far from one another. Continue Reading »
How Natural Family Planning taught me that the body is not a problem. Continue Reading »
I became engaged at Easter, and, as I’ve started planning our wedding with my fiancé, I’ve noticed a suspicious lacuna in the wedding how-to's I’ve picked up. I would have thought, after one magazine’s handbook covered strategies for getting your pet turtle to join your wedding procession . . . . Continue Reading »
Is polygamy the next same-sex marriage? Fundamentalist Mormons, Muslims, and others argue that federal and state statutes on religious freedom protect the practice. Some liberals have joined the cause, using arguments about sexual liberty, equality, and autonomy. Traditional criminal prohibitions . . . . Continue Reading »
A Missouri state assembly bill sponsored by Representative Bart Korman (R-Montgomery County) would require lobbyists to disclose sexual relationships with legislators or legislative staffers. The bill does so through defining sex as a “gift.”
Even if the sexual revolution is ultimately unsustainable, it does not mean that we will see a return to traditional sexual morality. Continue Reading »
There were only two occasions in my life as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) that required disciplinary ministry with a church member. One was gossip; the other was sex. The first didn’t get beyond private admonition by the pastor, me. That’s what the pastor does in . . . . Continue Reading »
An anti-gun protest in Texas offers a superb summary of this present age. Continue Reading »
In a few carefully argued pages in his recently translated The Crisis of Modernity, the Italian Catholic philosopher Augusto del Noce explains the “ascendance of eroticism.” Del Noce died in 1989, but his account could have been written yesterday. He illumines why Fifty Shades of Grey . . . . Continue Reading »
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