A Eulogy for Bullfighting
Growing up, I had always felt that I was “too sensitive” for bullfighting, and thus opposed it. I nevertheless visited La Plaza México—the world’s largest bullfighting arena—for the opening…
August/September 2025
Print Edition
August/September 2025 Print Edition
America’s Most Influential Journal of Religion and Public Life
An Evangelical in Italy
The Post-Californian Ideology
On November 6, 1996, Al Gore called Peter Navarro to express his sympathy. Navarro, a left-leaning economics…
Paul’s Ethnic Gospel
Grace, not race”—so goes the tidy maxim by which many modern interpreters characterize Paul’s gospel. In this…
The Right to Be Killed
In the days surrounding the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., leaders of the civil rights movement…
No Chosen, No “Almost Chosen”
Mazal tov! Partisans on the left and on the right, fighting bitterly for a larger swath of…
The First Things Podcast
At Home and Abroad
Conversations
The Fed and the College
The Editor’s Desk
A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones
Obergefell Must Go
Hello, Goodbye Christianity
The Beatles were boomers, through and through. Their 1966 record Revolver features—along with paradigm-shifting studio trickery and…
A Eulogy for Bullfighting
Growing up, I had always felt that I was “too sensitive” for bullfighting, and thus opposed it.…
Is Just War Theory Still Relevant?
Conflict in the Middle East brings fundamental questions about just war into the public debate. Yet the…
The Genius of American Christianity
Chesterton was half-right: America is a “nation with the soul of a church.” The other half of…
Waugh Against the Fogeys
On June 17, 1953, the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote to a friend: “I am now preparing a…
The King and the Swarm
The printing press did not just change how people shared information. It changed the normative patterns of…
The Future of Catholic Theology
About ten years ago I found myself in China teaching a weeklong philosophy seminar on the thought…
The Great Excommunicator
Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed Americaby sam tanenhausrandom house, 1,040 pages, $40 When Sam…
Out of the Wilderness
Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever:A New Generation’s Search for Religionby lamorna ashbloomsbury, 352 pages, $29.99 Godstruck: Seven…
Goodbye, Saffron
Vanishing Landscapes: The Story of Plants and How We Lost Themby bonnie lander johnsonhodder and stoughton, 320…
Second Death
Between our physical demise—when the soul, like a savedpage from a trashed notebook, lifts in the handof…
Forecast
How long can two people stay togetherwith this in the news and that in the sky? A…
Greetings on a Morning Walk
Blackberry vines, you hold this ground in the shade of a willow: all thorns, no fruit. *…
Empathy is Not Charity
Martin Scorsese’s recent film Silence, like the historical novel by Shūsaku Endō on which it is based,…
The Sacred Heart of Victor Hugo
The Temptation of the Impossible: Victor Hugo and Les Misérables By Mario Vargas Llosa Princeton University Press,…
The Whole World Groans
St. Jerome, angry over the protracted Arian crisis and the apparent victory of the “semi-Arians” at the…
Christianity and Poetry
I When I became a man, I put away childish things. —St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 13 Most…
My Madness
My brother Peter was a wondrous boy, the youngest, brightest, and bounciest of three kids: IQ 165,…
Shakespeare, Four Centuries On
This Saturday, April 23rd, marks an important anniversary: four hundred years since the death of William Shakespeare.…
