Encouraged by the success of our Erasmus Lecture, in 2017 First Things hosted its inaugural First Things Lecture in Washington, D.C., in partnership with The Catholic University of America’s Institute for Human Ecology. Russell Hittinger inaugurated the lecture series by discussing “The Social Vision of Leo XIII in the Twenty-First Century.” Michael Doran (2018), Patrick Deneen (2019), Douglas Farrow (2020), Joshua Mitchell (2022), and Matthew Crawford (2023) have given the subsequent lectures. The 2024 First Things Lecture will be given by Oren Cass on Monday, March 4 on “Constructing Conservatism in the Secular Age.” To register, please click here.

In addition to helping First Things grow its reader and supporter base in the Washington, D.C. area, the First Things Lecture enables us to highlight the ways in which our journal leads public conversation on political issues from a religiously grounded perspective. As with the Erasmus Lecture, First Things convenes a group of leading journalists, elected officials, and scholars for a day-after colloquium to discuss the lecture.