Archive
More than thirty years of First Things articles at your fingertips.
Please note that some of our content may not be available on this web archive at this time. If you cannot find a specific article, please contact us.
Articles
Lessons from the Decline of Protestant Churches
Reports of the financial struggles and decline in membership among large American denominations have become so commonplace that they often elicit little more than a shrug. But every now...
Anti-Humanism at Home and Abroad
Canada’s laws on medically assisted dying are remarkably progressive even by today’s standards. In 2022, the government reported that 4.1 percent of all deaths in Canada were medically assisted...
Human Battery Hens
Britain’s Daily Mail recently reported how around one hundred young Thai women were kept against their will, pumped full of hormones, and subjected to having their eggs forcibly harvested...
Purity Culture Isn’t the Problem
The last decade witnessed a sharp turn against the so-called purity culture that emerged in the 1990s American Christian scene. Emphasizing abstinence and exalting virginity, it has since been...
Neil Gaiman and the Failure of Modern Sexual Ethics
A recent Vulture article reporting on the sexual proclivities and alleged abusive activities of fantasy author Neil Gaiman has rekindled debates about power and consent, in large part because...
The Church of Empathy
Circle of Hope:A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Churchby eliza griswoldfarrar, straus and giroux, 352 pages, $20 Circle of Hope is a Philadelphia church that...
Dawkins’s Gender Dilemma
On December 30, Richard Dawkins resigned from the honorary board of the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) after it retracted an article arguing that gender is based on biology....
2024: Our Year in Books
R. R. Reno I was in a Goodwill in Denver when my eyes fell upon a paperback Penguin edition of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House. I bought it, and while...
What God Is This?
My wife and I think Rome is the greatest city on earth; we try to go every year. I have told my students that, if I ever won the...
Why I Am Not Catholic
Speaking at the Leonine Forum in D.C. recently, I was asked a friendly but pointed question: “Why are you not a Catholic?” The questioner noted that in my talk...
The Things That Are Above
The 2024 U.S. election season proved a time of revelation for the Church. A remarkable and worrying number of pastors and self-professed Christians on social media did nothing but...
The Fall of Archbishop Welby
Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, resigned on Tuesday after an investigation found he’d mishandled the John Smyth abuse scandal. The resignation is a shock but, for those aware of...
The Tragedy of IVF
Several times over the last year, I have criticized IVF in my lectures. Each time I have been asked the same question afterward: “Do you think that children born...
The Humanity of Hospitality
Princeton professor Robert P. George recently drew my attention to a trivial but emblematic incident in which a flight attendant wished a passenger a “blessed” night. Unfortunately, the recipient of these...
The Exultant Nature of Today’s Abortion Advocacy
A Planned Parenthood mobile clinic is offering free abortions just a few blocks from the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which concludes today. The DNC is not officially...
