A Woman’s East of Eden
Zoe Kazan’s seven-part Netflix adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden brings a woman’s sensibility to a man’s epic—for better and for worse…
November 2026
Print Edition
November 2026 Print Edition
America’s Most Influential Journal of Religion and Public Life
The Left Is Right About the Bible
A Culture of Parricide
I learned a new word the other day: déploration. It’s the French, directly from the Latin, for “lament.”…
Algorithm, Interface, and AI
Many conversations about artificial intelligence end in a stalemate: A sentiment like “ChatGPT is awful because kids…
Serial Liar, Serial Comma
How would you write a public letter that you know will become front-page news? Would you write…
Who Killed the Clancy Children?
After a Massachusetts jury failed to convict Lindsay Clancy of strangling her three small children to death…
Icarus Descending
A Woman’s East of Eden
Zoe Kazan’s seven-part Netflix adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden brings a woman’s sensibility to a…
Women Should Not Tolerate Porn
Young women today have unrealistically high standards. When I speak to conservative young men about dating, this…
Why the Death Penalty Is a Sore Point for Papal Authority
Pope Leo XIV marked World Day Against the Death Penalty, observed on October 10, with the following…
Foucault’s Idol of Nothingness
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Michel Foucault. He was influential in his lifetime,…
The Myth of St. Francis
At the beginning of his 2020 encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis speaks of “an episode in the…
Job and Her
It is said that Job lost everything, but she has lost more. All her possessions—the money, the…
De Gaulle Triumphant
The Second World War left Europe invaded and ruined, divided between Soviet and American occupations. Hitler’s defeat…
Forget Odysseus. Aeneas Is the True American Hero.
Who is our Odysseus? Or more precisely, who is the most Odyssean hero of American film? Matt…
Meet the Post-Religious Right
There have been many books written about the online right and the Trump movement, most by people…
Smashing the Images
As the postwar era draws to an end, some Christians continue to reach for analogies to the…
The Chariot Burials
Wheeling through the clotted earth, / Bronze, bone, and leather clumped in clay…
William of St. Thierry
“Where love and understanding join, hearts are tranquil, / They rise above the turmoil of this world…
Lethe
He thought he saw her in the orchid house / and all the flowers seemed to disappear…
Iraq and the Moral Judgement
Some readers have complained that First Things, and I in particular, have had a great deal to…
Just War and Iraq Wars
The first phase of the Iraq Wars came to a dramatic—and ominously prophetic—denouement on that heady day…
The Good Samaritan’s Burden
In his interestingly wrong-headed essay, Paul Miller argues that there are extraterritorial evils so great that they…
The Theology of Foreign Policy
On matters of foreign policy, Americans are divided into two hidden camps. Not Republicans versus Democrats, nor…
America’s Fighting Faith
The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America’s Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interestby walter a. mcdougallyale,…
Small Wars, Big Plans
Less than a year after the attack of September 11, Americans have just about succeeded in absorbing…
