There are questions so big they’re almost laughable. What is the meaning of life? for instance. We’ve been grappling with that one ever since Adam and Eve saw the first exit sign. Our modern technology promises many blessings, but a GPS of life-direction is not among them. In diligent . . . . Continue Reading »
Walter Benjamin’s is a name to be conjured with in the academic disciplines where "theory" is king. A Jew and a Marxist, he was killed in 1940 while trying to escape Germany, having been rather late in catching on to what the Nazis were up to. Benjamin is not for bedtime reading. . . . . Continue Reading »
This is a story¯a creation myth from the Tofa: In the very beginning there were no people, there was nothing at all.There was only the first duck, she was flying along.Having settled down for the night, the duck laid an egg.Then, her egg broke.The liquid of her egg poured out and formed a . . . . Continue Reading »
On September 18, United Church of Christ minister Kristi Denham announced that a new organization of clergy called the End of Life Consultation Service (ELCS) had been created that would be devoted to ministering to critically ill medical patients . Rev. Denham explained that this organization would . . . . Continue Reading »
The report made headlines across the globe, but even those generally sympathetic to its conclusions acknowledged the difficulties in performing a study like this. And the conclusions, as a result, seem to rest on very shaky foundations.The subject is the new global study on abortion just published . . . . Continue Reading »
Back in February, I received a phone call from the journalist Paul Elie. I knew his name from a book he published a few years ago, called The Life You Save May Be Your Own , an appealing effort that I reviewed favorably in First Things .He wanted to talk about an article, for the Atlantic Monthly , . . . . Continue Reading »
The streets of New York are clergy-friendly. In my limited experience, more so than other world cities. Of course, Rome doesn’t count. There one might get the impression that the Church is suffering from a superfluity rather than a shortage of priests. Greet all the priests and sisters you . . . . Continue Reading »
Tomorrow, October 12, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged . It was a huge, hotly debated bestseller in its day, and its sales have held steady ever since. Its author, certainly, retains a certain mystique as the exacting thinker still revered by . . . . Continue Reading »
“Expansive and yet vacuous is the prose of Kahlil Gibran,” writes Alan Jacobs in the new issue of First Things . And weary grows the mind doomed to read it. The hours of my penance lengthen, The penance established for me by the editor of this magazine, And those hours may be numbered as . . . . Continue Reading »
Whatever one thinks about whether it is possible for Christian theology to be systematic—and there are good reasons to think not—we can at least say it is good manners to attempt to lay out everything one thinks in an orderly fashion.The brief dogmatics seems to have made a return to . . . . Continue Reading »
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