James Nuechterlein

I was born into a Lutheran Christian family, was baptized and confirmed within the Lutheran Church, and, God willing, will die in that communion. Unlike a number of Lutheran colleagues and friends who have become Roman Catholics or are tempted in that direction, I have never seriously contemplated . . . . Continue Reading »

We are still sorting out the meaning of last November’s election results. How significant was the GOP landslide? Was it, as Republicans insist, a momentous ideological turning point, or simply, as Democrats hope, an intense but momentary electoral outburst representing a trans-ideological . . . . Continue Reading »

Among my friends, especially the liberal ones, it is a matter of some curiosity that I, the least politically correct person imaginable, should live in a neighborhood that is a multiculturalist’s dream. To be precise, it’s not a neighborhood, it’s an island—Roosevelt Island. Two miles . . . . Continue Reading »

It all began-as did so many other bad things-in the sixties. It was during that obsessively political decade that sportswriters apparently decided that if they were to be thought of as Serious People, they would have to become seriously political-while they remained sportswriters. And so we got, . . . . Continue Reading »

Revolutions in consciousness sometimes announce themselves in minor, even trivial, ways. It was some ten or twelve years ago. My oldest daughter and I were watching a college football game on TV on a Saturday afternoon. Notre Dame was one of the teams, and my daughter, then a teenager, cheered as . . . . Continue Reading »

This fall Valparaiso University decided (not unreasonably) that five-and-a-half years of leave of absence is enough, and so I find myself for the first time since 1964 unattached to a university faculty. I am no longer Professor of American Studies and Political Thought, and the adjustment will . . . . Continue Reading »

“But why do you have to be so polemical?” It’s a not unfamiliar complaint (see, for example, this month’s correspondence), and one that I—and the other editors of First Things—take seriously, any possible appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. We live, by choice and . . . . Continue Reading »

It turns out, in retrospect, to have been a most ironically timed meeting. The White House Communications Office had arranged for nine representatives of the religious press—nicely balanced as to denomination and theological inclination—to meet with the President on December 17. That . . . . Continue Reading »

Sometime in the late summer of 1988, when I was still teaching at Valparaiso University in Indiana, I received a phone call from the Washington headquarters of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The official there wondered if I would be willing to serve on an AAUP . . . . Continue Reading »

One sometimes gets the clearest sense that a movement is in deep trouble by considering not the weakest statements of its case, but the very strongest. So it is that sympathetic readers may come to deeply melancholy conclusions as to the state of liberal Protestantism after reading Peter Berger’s . . . . Continue Reading »