I did not think I knew much about death. In high school, my headmaster reminded us constantly that young though we were, we were destined to die. Death was an abstract fact of reality for me, mainly a reason to pursue now what mattered most in life. And then I saw Richard John Neuhaus die. At the . . . . Continue Reading »
Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has made a compelling case for the creative and culturally dynamic role that religious minorities can play, even in societies where the majority of people deeply oppose their religious inclinations, as was the case for much of the history of the Jewish people in Christian . . . . Continue Reading »
A man named Jim died at work today. I watched it happen. I came out and there he was supine on the tarmac as though enjoying a particularly fine patch of sky. A security guard knelt beside him, pumping his dying chest. Jim’s body rocked slowly like an unmoored ship, rippling with each compression in plain sight of us all. I felt embarrassed for him. . . . Continue Reading »
As 2013 draws to a close I’d like to look back at the past year for First Things magazine. We published some winners, to be sure, but also some losers. And so, with Lot’s wife as a warning against dwelling on the past, here are some observations. . . . Continue Reading »
There is a small but growing movement among evangelicals against unique friendship for Israel, embodied by the recent “Impact Holy Land” conference hosted by Evangelicals for Social Action in Philadelphia. Among the prominent U.S. and Palestinian church voices who spoke was Lynne Hybels, co-founder with her pastor husband Bill of the Chicago area Willow Creek Church, which itself spawned a widely replicated model for especially non-denominational congregations… . Continue Reading »
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are over now, but the melodies linger on—not only for those who observe the full twelve days of Christmastide, but also for others for whom the season has been mostly about lots of good food, good cheer, and the feel-good sentimentality of “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.” . . . Continue Reading »
“In many and various ways,” the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, does God reveal Himself. I was reminded of this again recently while reading the Gospels. It’s thrilling to think about what it would have been like to hear His words freshly delivered while sitting amongst thousands in the rocky countryside of Judea or pressed against a perspiring mob in a synagogue. There would have been moments of awe and wonder at Jesus’s description of the coming Kingdom, joy and comfort in His renderings of the Beatitudes or the Good Shepherd and His flock. But at other times, there were reactions much more visceral in nature—those of shock and bewilderment. . . . Continue Reading »
When I was in graduate school in the eighties, foundationalism was a dirty word. We didn’t think it was possible or even desirable to provide a metaphysical grounding for theological claims, so we spent our time doing method instead. Methods, after all, can be applied to a mode of inquiry without raising the question of truth. We were not confident enough in the truth of our faith to subject it to any single account of what truth is… . Continue Reading »
On Tuesday, Pope Francis canonized Fr. Peter Faber, SJ, one of the great figures of the Catholic Reformation; and by doing so, gave us a key to understanding his own approach to the new evangelization, and a model for spreading the faith in modern times. Peter Faber is little known today, but Francis’ announcement should change that. . . . Continue Reading »
When Dana Gioia’s essay “Can Poetry Matter?” appeared in The Atlantic in 1991, it galvanized a national conversation about the state of American literature and how creative writing was being taught, produced, and consumed by the reading public. Among other points, Gioia argued that poetry had become obscure, self-referential, and detached from common experience through the influence of university writing programs and trendy ideological nostrums. Gioia’s latest essay, “The Catholic Writer Today,” published in the December 2013 issue of First Things, bears a striking resemblance to his Atlantic essay on poetry . . . Continue Reading »
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