Well, I think we can pack up this Christian thing and take the rest of the day off. That’s if what Charles Freeman writes in A New History of Early Christianity can be believed. Freeman’s book (2009) received only a brief review from First Things… . Continue Reading »
Baseball and movies don’t often play well together. William Bendix as a Marine who dies happy in Guadalcanal Diary because he’s just heard that the Dodgers have won is an icon of 1940s Americana; the same William Bendix as the Bambino in The Babe Ruth Story is a sad business, to be consigned to the (bad) memory bank. … Continue Reading »
Debate scholarships paid for a good part of my college education. Learning to make a coherent argument, buttress it using credible research, and defend it extemporaneously have been invaluable skills over the years. But I’m now wondering if my years of labor in the vineyards of logic and evidence were worthwhile… . Continue Reading »
Earlier this month, during a homily at morning Mass, Pope Francis’ gift for succinct but vivid instruction was on full display: “I don’t know why, but there is a dark joy in gossiping,” he said. “We slip into gossip, making the object of our chatter merchandise to be bartered.” … Continue Reading »
What Does Bowdoin Teach? That’s the title of the 360-page report that my colleague Michael Toscano and I published on April 3. Coincidence gave us a nice round number of pages, but it was indeed our plan to compass Bowdoin College. We set out to create something new: a full 360-degree picture of a liberal arts education … Continue Reading »
We live in an era of unparalleled economic freedom. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, free markets have ruled without much in the way of resistance. As a consequence, for the most part our political problems now involve coming to terms with the global triumph of capitalism… . Continue Reading »
Is it possible to embrace a gay identity and be a faithful Christian? All parties in the recent debate here at First Things agree that lifelong marriage between one man and one woman is the only morally appropriate context for a sexual relationship. But while Joshua Gonnerman, Eve Tushnet, Melinda Selmys, and Wesley Hill all argue that the “gay” label can be appropriated by Christians, Daniel Mattson warns us … Continue Reading »
You cannot have poetry without form, just as you cannot have prose fiction without narrative structure or drama without dialogue or action. And what creates form in poetry, after the constraint of a central idea, event, or image, is sound. The way that sound shapes poetry has generally become less evident as poets have discarded regular meter and end rhyme … Continue Reading »
Thanks to tremendous advances in biotechnological prowess, living human bodies”or rather their constituent parts and biological functions”are increasingly being looked upon as valuable commercial commodities. Human eggs (oocytes) are a prime example. Ounce for ounce, ova are surely the most valuable product in the world … Continue Reading »
They think the way you solve things is by electing the right people. It’s nice to elect the right people, but that isn’t how you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. -Milton Friedman In the 2012 election, right-leaning super PACs spent over $290 million opposing Obama … Continue Reading »
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