William Temple emphasizes in Christianity and Social Order
“this social nature of man is fundamentalto his being. I am not first some one on my own account who happensto be the child of my parents, a citizen oi Great Britain, and so forth. Ifyou take all these social relationships away, there is nothing left. A manis talking nonsense if he says: ‘Well, if I had been the son of some oneelse . . . etc.’ He is his parents son; what he is supposing is not that heshould he someone elses son, but that he should not exist and someoneelse should exist instead. By our mutual influence we actually constituteone another as what we are. This mutual influence finds its first field ofactivity in the family; it finds other fields later in school, college, TradeUnion, professional association, city, county, nation, Church.”
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
