Dear Readers, welcome to the new First Things website! We still have the same great content, including new material every day. But our look has changed, and we’ve added new functions. . . . Continue Reading »
One of the most neglected recent books on sexual difference is also one of the most important. Christopher C. Roberts’ 2007 book, Creation and Covenant, is a remarkably comprehensive and detailed theological investigation of the topic. By giving us a narrative arc that stretches from the earliest Church Fathers to Pope John Paul II and beyond, Roberts considers not only the ways in which these figures disagree with one another but how they provide resources for understanding sexual difference today. Continue Reading »
Why is Calvinism so influential among American Evangelicals while Lutheranism is not? We might describe the statistically modal convert to Calvinism—that is, the most frequently observed kind of convert—as a person like this: A young adult, usually male. Raised in a broad though indistinct Evangelical (and sometimes nominally Catholic) home. Bright. A reader. Searching for better intellectual answers to questions about God, Jesus and the Bible. Is open to becoming a pastor. Why does this young man so much more often become a Calvinist instead a Lutheran? Continue Reading »
The idea that there are other “gods” who exist as real supernatural beings, albeit infinitely inferior to the only Creator and Redeemer, pervades the Bible. The Psalms fairly explode with evidence. . . . Continue Reading »
Wright’s Law is only twelve minutes long, but it has been viewed almost two million times on YouTube and Vimeo. Director Zack Conkle begins the documentary in the classroom of Jeffrey Wright, his former physics teacher at Louisville’s Male Traditional High School (now co-ed). Announcing a “test question alert” as a robot might, the innovative Mr. Wright immediately commands the attention of his students. Just when we think the film is going to concentrate on Mr. Wright’s gifts as a teacher, however, it shifts focus. . . . Continue Reading »
In Hungary, Croatia, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, a pro-family, pro-life revolution and a rediscovery of Christian roots is occurring. While few in the American media have noticed, this trend should challenge those who simply lament Europe’s moral malaise. Unnoticed in the shadow of a secularized west, religion’s public role has been growing in the east since the collapse of communism. . . . Continue Reading »
In one of his later essays, Jacques Derrida identified a “newly arisen apocalyptic tone in philosophy,” and in the decade since his death, that tone has become a tumult. René Girard’s latest is a shrill warning about the end of European civilization. Slavoj Zizek hears the hoofbeats of four horsemen: environmental destruction, biogenetics, imbalances in global capitalism, and “the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions” . . . Continue Reading »
In mid-December, six-year-old Isaiah Martinez brought a box of candy canes to his public elementary school. Affixed to each cane was a legend explaining the manner in which the candy symbolizes the life and death of Jesus. Isaiah’s first-grade teacher took possession of the candy and asked her supervising principal whether it would be permissible for Isaiah to distribute to his classmates. The teacher was informed that, while the candy itself might be distributed, the attached religious message could not. She is then reported to have told Isaiah that “Jesus is not allowed at school,” to have torn the legends from the candy, and to have thrown them in the trash. . . . Continue Reading »
My oldest son has traveled back to Vietnam on three, four occasions now. He arrived at our home in 1975 as an eleven-year-old refugee. We, my first wife and I, adopted him five years later. He was part of the contingent of “unaccompanied minors” temporarily housed at the refugee center at Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas. Something on the order of 2,200 Vietnamese fleeing the fall of Saigon went through there, finding sponsors, relocating, rebuilding lives. . . . Continue Reading »
Almost fifty years ago, when the Catholic Church unveiled its new rite of Mass in the Sistine Chapel, Cardinal John Heenan, then Archbishop of Westminster, remarked that if the Church used the new liturgy in ordinary parishes it would “soon be left with a congregation mostly of women and children.” In 1967, Heenan could proudly assert that in his country “not only women and children but also fathers of families and young men” regularly attended Mass. . . . Continue Reading »
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