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

Degrees of Faith

Now online (and possibly in the mailboxes of those who subscribe), the November issue of First Things, featuring our first ever survey of America’s colleges and universities. Unlike other rankings, we include the schools’ social and religious life as well as their academics… . Continue Reading »

No Mere Christianity

A few days ago I posted on “First Thoughts” an item contrasting an article from the (Southern) Baptist Press claiming that only two of the 33 miners trapped underground in Chile were Christians, with one by an English Catholic who stressed the miners’ Catholicism and said he had “no doubt at all that there weren’t that many Adventists or Evangelicals down there.” … Continue Reading »

The Nobel Prize that Wasn’t

A week after the Nobel Prize went to Robert Edwards for his accomplishments in developing in vitro fertilization as a treatment for infertility”and more than thirty years after Edwards’ first successful IVF procedure in 1978”IVF still looks like an amateur lab experiment… . Continue Reading »

The Body of Death, Pictured

We are not at home in the world, at least not in our current damaged condition. As St. Augustine put it: we long to untangle ourselves from the earthly city and its wounding self-loves so that we can journey toward the heavenly city, but our bondage is self-wrought, and we cannot free ourselves… . Continue Reading »

Evangelicalism’s Fads and Fixtures

There are two types of evangelicals in America: those who naively embrace whatever trendy items happen to be hot sellers at “Christian” bookstores”WWJD? bracelets, Testamints, prayer of Jabez scented candles”and those who shun such kitsch. I am solidly of the second type. Like a good Pharisee, I thank God every day that I’m not like those people… . Continue Reading »

Bob Woodward, the President, and Just War

There was considerable just war argument before, during, and after the Iraq War. Some of it was not terribly insightful, but, in the main, the debate demonstrated that the principles of the classic just war tradition, if not the tradition’s intellectual architecture, were still in place in American public life… . Continue Reading »

The Tolerance Disconnect

In last week’s episode of the hit TV series Glee, the acerbic cheerleading instructor Sue Sylvester revealed to her Down Syndrome-afflicted sister that she stopped believing in God because of the way she, the sister, had been treated by people who saw her as “less than perfect.” “You were perfect in my eyes,” Sylvester said . . . . Continue Reading »

From Junior High Down to VH1

Curious to see what’s out there, since we don’t watch television at home, while visiting friends recently I flipped through the channels after the children were in bed, and came across some sort of roast, I think on VH1. A woman who turned out to be the host was insulting several people sitting nearby … Continue Reading »

Tags

Loading...

Filter Web Exclusive Articles