According to a new poll , a press release for which I’ve just received, only about one in six Americans think Glenn Beck would be a good leader for a religious movement. This strikes me as similar to polling people on whether the First Things editors should try out for the New York Knicks, . . . . Continue Reading »
You know you are in political trouble when you feel the need to change the words used to describe a public controversy. Now, with the public clearly not jumping on the global warming hysteria bandwagon, John Holdren, President Obama’s science czar, has instructed us to use a new phrase . . . . Continue Reading »
Economist Bryan Caplan pushes back against the high-IQ misanthropes : Out of all the reactions I’ve heard to Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids , the most disturbing are all variations on “Except stupid people. They shouldn’t have kids.” I could snark, . . . . Continue Reading »
Another apparently unsolvable conflict of church and the state in the guise of public schooling: a girl in North Carolina has been suspended from school for wearing a (very small) nose ring, which is against the dress code, unless the child has a religious reason, which this child claims to do, as . . . . Continue Reading »
Pope Benedict’s extraordinary celebration at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow was one for the ages. The liturgy was beautiful and stirring, the people’s faith obviously heartfelt, and Benedict’s homily —recalling Scotland’s Christian heritage, and the true destiny of . . . . Continue Reading »
At Inside Catholic, David Mills explains how the Church can interest believers in confession : Confession ought to be a great selling point for the Catholic Church. Years ago, I saw some young Evangelicals ask an older Catholic convert about confession, with the guarded but lurid interest of . . . . Continue Reading »
In 1973, Richard Lovelace penned an important article detailing the causes of an acute problem that persists in the lives of many evangelical Christians. He calls it the “sanctification gap” and zeros in on the history of Protestantism to explain why evangelicals have so many problems . . . . Continue Reading »
MSNBC has a live video feed of the papal mass available here . Update: Here is another feed from the official papal visit website . . . . . Continue Reading »
The graceful and even elegant beginning of the state visit has only been made trying by the incessant banter of commentators who think themselves obliged to fill in every second of air time with streams of talk, occasionally informative, but mostly banal. “When I met the Holy Father . . . . . . . Continue Reading »
Eamon Duffy of Cambridge University is one of the church’s great historians . He is also, at times, one of its most disappointing. The problem with Professor Duffy—maddening, to those who admire his books—is that he has no feel for contemporary Catholicism. As long as he is writing . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
