First Things is holding its annual fundraising drive . As Richard John Neuhaus writes, I well know that some of our readers have very limited means. Even a small gift is a real sacrifice. Others, however, have been blessed with very considerable means. To all I say: Please give as you are . . . . Continue Reading »
In The Pro-Life Movement as the Politics of the 1960s ¯the opening essay in the January issues Public Square¯Richard John Neuhaus writes: Whatever else it is, the pro-life movement of the last thirty-plus years is one of the most massive and sustained expressions of . . . . Continue Reading »
Its almost impossible not to know how it opens. Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol has been filmed at least forty-two times and dramatized for the stage in dozens of versions¯the first almost . . . . Continue Reading »
There was a woman screaming on Park Avenue, flecks of saliva spraying from her mouth as she raged into her cell phone, Its not my fault. Over and over, like the high-pitched squeal of a power saw cutting bricks: Its not my fault and a run of foul names, Its not my fault . . . . Continue Reading »
A knight who battles windmills; a traveling salesman who wakes up one morning a bug; a freed slave who decides to own slaves: One mark of great literature is its power to confront our imaginations with unexpected, idiosyncratic premises and, through the act of storytelling, make it possible for us . . . . Continue Reading »
Are you Anglican, or Episcopalian? As an Episcopalian interloper studying at a Methodist seminary, I get the question a lot from my puzzled friends. Each time Im asked, part of me wants to launch into a mini-primer on Anglican ecclesiology¯to wit, that Episcopalians are . . . . Continue Reading »
According to the conventional narrative, science and religion have been at war for some three hundred years. But the reality is deeper and more complex. The English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote in his Science and the Modern World (1925) that without devotion to the God of Israel, modern . . . . Continue Reading »
Dear First Things Reader,God loves a cheerful giver, St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Over almost twenty years, the readers of First Things have demonstrated that they are generous givers, and I would like to think that you are cheerful givers as well.To be sure, this year is not like . . . . Continue Reading »
Avery Cardinal Dulles was one of the greatest thinkers in the modern Roman Catholic church and perhaps its most distinguished representative in the United States. The first American to be named a cardinal soley for his theological work, and for his last two decades a professor at Fordham University, . . . . Continue Reading »
The great contest is over the culture, the guiding ideas and habits of mind and heart that inform the way we understand the world and our place in it. Christians who, knowingly or unknowingly, embrace the model of “Christ without culture”—meaning Christianity in indifference to culture—are . . . . Continue Reading »