Matthew J. Franck

N.T. Wright compared same-sex marriage advocates to Nazis and Communists? No. Continue Reading »

I thank Headmaster Crowe for that gracious introduction. And I thank Professor Owen Anderson of Arizona State University for introducing me to the headmaster, and to the wonderful venture of the Great Hearts Academies, which are doing such good in the world, one teacher, one student, one person at a time. One person at a time, I think, is really the only way to do any good in the world, for human beings are individual persons in communities, not statistics in a collective or parts in a machine. So on this happy day, as the students of the class of 2014 celebrate a milestone achievement with their families, their friends, and their teachers, I come to congratulate you, to wish you well, and to address each of you as a person who has received the good turn of a fine education, and who should feel a responsibility to repay the debt of that education by living well as a person, mindful of the personhood, the individuality, and the good of others around you, in the various communities through which your life will take you. Continue Reading »

On May 15 in New York City, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty awarded its Canterbury Medal to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, who will be familiar to First Things readers thanks to his marvelous Erasmus Lecture, given last autumn and published in the January 2014 issues under the title “On . . . . Continue Reading »

My Witherspoon Institute colleague, Distinguished Senior Fellow in Human Rights Chen Guangcheng, will speak at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. next Tuesday, June 3, at 2:00 p.m., to mark the 25th anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square, perpetrated by the tyrants of . . . . Continue Reading »

Readers may recall the World Vision flap from last month. One day the evangelical charity announced that it was changing its employment practices, to permit persons in same-sex relationships to work for it as long as they were “married” under some legal jurisdiction, and with all the . . . . Continue Reading »

Next Monday, March 24–the day before oral arguments in the Hobby Lobby andConestoga Wood Products cases–the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center will host an event, “Everybody’s Business: The Legal, Economic, and Political Implications of . . . . Continue Reading »

At the urging of a couple of friends who had recently read it for the first time, I reread (after about thirty years) Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s modern classic A Canticle for Leibowitz. It was far better than I appreciated its being in my younger days (oh, for a nickel every time I realize how . . . . Continue Reading »

As the cases challenging the Health and Human Services mandate make their way through the courts, the main claim is that those who object to the mandate on the basis of religious conscience should be exempted from the law’s requirement of providing objectionable drugs and services. The goal is . . . . Continue Reading »

Everywhere we turn these days, we are confronted with issues of religious liberty. Can employers be compelled to include contraceptives and abortifacients in their employee health plans, if their faith teaches it’s wrong? Can a photographer be fined for refusing, because of her faith, to . . . . Continue Reading »

I have been trying to think of whether to say something about the “gay Christian” debate that has sputtered rather intermittently into life around here. One does not want to give gratuitous offense. I have found myself strongly drawn to the arguments of Austin Ruse (who has written . . . . Continue Reading »