Blogs

It's time for our political intelligensia to wake up. So argues Walter Russell Mead in a thoughtful piece in The American Interest, “The Meaning of Mr. Trump.” Forget about handicapping the race between Trump and Clinton. Forget about itemizing Trump's liabilities and failings. What's important . . . . Continue Reading »

25 May 2016 0

Student Writers Wanted

by Editors

Do you want to see your writing on the First Things website? If you are currently enrolled in college, a graduate program, or seminary, be sure to enter our second annual Student Essay Contest by June 15.

24 May 2016 0

The Language of Love

by Carl R. Trueman

The politicizing of the language of love is confusing and lethal for freedom. Continue Reading »

24 May 2016 0

A Movement, Hijacked

by Abigail Rine Favale

Subverted recounts the untold history of how the feminist and pro-abortion movements became allied. Part exposé, part conversion memoir, Browder’s book defies easy categorization, but by the end, I understood her approach. Browder’s honest account of her personal life—including her choice to have an abortion, despite being in a loving marriage—highlights the contradictions between reality and the flashy fantasy of the sexually liberated woman. . . . Continue Reading »

23 May 2016 0

Saintly Defiance on Stage

by Alexi Sargeant

Franz Jägerstätter, born in 1907, led a wild youth in Austria, turned to God after fearing he had killed another man in a fight, and settled down with a wife to run a farm and father children. In 1943, he refused the draft out of a conviction that a Catholic could not fight for Nazism. Defying the entreaties of mother, neighbors, priest, and bishop, he went to the guillotine. Even after the war, Jägerstätter’s countrymen called him a traitor and denied his widow, Franziska, and their three daughters any aid. Only in 2007 was Jägerstätter beatified by Benedict XVI. . . . Continue Reading »

20 May 2016 0

Mercersburg Theology, Eucharistic Union, and Civil Society

by James R. Rogers

Mercersburg theology has a small but devoted following among evangelically-oriented Calvinists. It was a nineteenth-century movement centered in the German Reformed seminary at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. Leading scholars John Williamson Nevins and Philip Schaff criticized the individualism and . . . . Continue Reading »

20 May 2016 0