Is America a Creedal Nation?
All civilizations, like all individuals, have flaws. The Christian civilization of Church and empire had flaws. America, which began as a refuge from the religious wars of Europe, has…
June/July 2025
Print Edition
June/July 2025 Print Edition
America’s Most Influential Journal of Religion and Public Life
How Obergefell Failed
An Evangelical in Italy
How does an evangelical—not joined with the Church in Rome, but committed to one holy, catholic, and…
Leave Joy Alone
C S. Lewis has never been my favorite Christian writer. I admit this sheepishly, given his stature.…
How I Kicked My Phone Habit
About eighteen months ago, I decided I wanted a healthier relationship with my smartphone. My phone had…
Classical Renewal by Research
The research pursued these days in university humanities departments does not, as a rule, enjoy high esteem…
The First Things Podcast
L.A. and Elon
Conversations
Classical Education Keeps Growing
The Editor’s Desk
Women Without Men!
New York Deserves Better than State-Sanctioned Suicide
Remembering Walter Brueggemann
Earlier this month, renowned Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann (1933–2025) passed away. Brueggemann was a lion of…
The Vatican’s Duty to Armenian Christians
Last month, in one of the first liturgical acts of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV formally took…
The Comic Trinity of Nicaea
The year 2025 marks the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, convened by Emperor Constantine I…
Glenn Greenwald Is Not a Victim
In a scene from the 1961 British neo-noir film Victim, four gay men are having a conversation…
Is America a Creedal Nation?
All civilizations, like all individuals, have flaws. The Christian civilization of Church and empire had flaws. America,…
Saving Christian Europe
Christianity made Europe,” Georges Bernanos writes in The Great Cemeteries Under the Moon. “Christianity is dead. Europe…
How to Commemorate 1776
Next year is America’s 250th anniversary, and President Trump has promised us a “spectacular birthday party.” The…
Why Twain Endures
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Sam Clemens (not yet “Mark Twain”) didn’t know where…
Zoning Out
In an era in which the American dream slips ever further from the grasp of the common…
Defending the Christian Character of England
A couple of years ago, I heard the historian David Starkey describe the Church of England as…
Greetings on a Morning Walk
Blackberry vines, you hold this ground in the shade of a willow: all thorns, no fruit. *…
An Outline of Trees
They rise above us, arching, spreading, thin Where trunk and bough give way to veining twig. We…
Fallacy
A shadow cast by something invisible falls on the white cover of a book lying on my…
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.…
