James Nuechterlein

It has become a commonplace that religious controversy today occurs more often across church boundaries than between them. Prior to Vatican II, the most important theological disputes in America—and in the West in general—pitted Protestants against Catholics. In the decades since, such . . . . Continue Reading »

It was only when I reached my twenties that I came fully to understand that the center of the liturgy is the Eucharist and not, as I had been led to conclude as a child, the sermon. Even today, when I like to think I have gone well beyond “mere Protestantism,” to paraphrase C. S. Lewis, I place . . . . Continue Reading »

The production schedule of First Things is such that copy for the current issue is due before the previous issue has reached our subscribers. Which means that as I write this, I have no way of knowing the reaction of readers to last month’s column, “Punishment Yes, Impeachment No.” . . . . Continue Reading »

It is now (I write shortly before Thanksgiving Day) virtually certain that Bill Clinton will not be removed from office. And, however reluctantly, I find myself in agreement with those who argue that the impeachment process should not go forward. Consider, first, where we are. According to every . . . . Continue Reading »

It can’t be easy to write a play that is at once boring and offensive. But that is what Terrence McNally has accomplished, so to speak, in Corpus Christi, his bathetic rendering of the life of Jesus (here Joshua) as the gay man of sorrows. The critics—including those who clearly wanted the . . . . Continue Reading »

It is a pleasure to recommend to readers Father Edward Oakes’ masterful essay on original sin elsewhere in this issue. My own pleasure in reading it was augmented by the reflections, both personal and political, it triggered in me. It was the doctrine of original sin that made me, in my youth, an . . . . Continue Reading »

When I was a child, Lutherans enthusiastically celebrated October 31 as Reformation Day. Today most of them quietly observe it. That movement from celebration to restrained observation is indicative of the ambiguous situation of contemporary American Lutheranism. Not that the new attitude is . . . . Continue Reading »

Each time I return to Frankenmuth, as I did again earlier this summer, I am plunged into family history. Located in the Saginaw Valley in east central Michigan, Frankenmuth is one of four small communities established in the area by German Lutheran immigrants from Franconia (now part of Bavaria) in . . . . Continue Reading »

Sports nuts express their nuttiness in a variety of ways. My colleague Matt Berke, for example, is a monomaniacal sports nut. He likes only one sport, baseball, and only one team, the New York Yankees. Which of these is the more unfathomable is hard to say. Baseball is, of all sports other than . . . . Continue Reading »

Modern American liberalism rests, at heart, on faith in the power of the federal government to solve the fundamental problems of society. The intellectual origins of that faith go back to the nineteenth century, but it first found programmatic political expression in Theodore Roosevelt’s New . . . . Continue Reading »