For Christians, as for everyone else, the topic of sexual ethics is today one of widespread confusion, contention, and uncertainty. In this essay I propose to deal with the specific question of the kinds of promises and undertakings people ought to make when they engage in sexual relations. But I . . . . Continue Reading »
Ungodly Women: Gender and the First Wave of American Fundamentalism by Betty A. Deberg Fortress Press, 165 pages, $9.95 paper DeBerg of Valparaiso University makes the argument that the “first wave” of fundamentalism, around the turn of the century, is in fact the progenitor of today’s . . . . Continue Reading »
I I have been considering the ravens, who live without worrying and have no bins or barns And have no reaping machines. Yet they are fed well—their bodies sleek, gloved in black silk. With what a minor tempest They startle and settle, yet they are the poets of motion. Like folk songs their . . . . Continue Reading »
the wind's blown stars to powder in the sky's blueso the morning's pale and clear, soft as breath,those are storms' leavings,these horizons swept clean. we fill, we empty we connect and retract and sometimes each dream, every cell . . . . Continue Reading »
It is a pity that First Things has printed a review of my book Sham Pearls for Real Swine (January) that appears to attack me rather than deal with the issues my book raises. My book is not a continuation of my late father, Francis Schaeffer’s, work. Nor was it written out of a . . . . Continue Reading »
Out of all the tragedies and horrors of Communist rule in the last seventy years there emerges a blessing: the fact that Marxists and socialists were actually able to put their ideas into practice has meant that their defeat has been complete. In the East, as a result of glasnost, not only . . . . Continue Reading »
Newman did not regard himself as a theologian, and it would distort his accomplishments to call him one. He was that rarer and more comprehensive figure, a Christian humanist, who set his face against utilitarians of both the mind and the spirit. The spirit of Newman sought wholeness of vision: the . . . . Continue Reading »
About the public debate preceding Operation Desert Storm, two things may be said with some confidence. First, there has rarely been such a sustained (and in many respects impressive) public grappling with the moral criteria and political logic of the just war tradition. Administration officials, . . . . Continue Reading »
I strongly believe that religion should play a central role in American public life, that a multiplicity of religious symbols belong in the public square. I am not now (nor have I ever been) comfortable with the liberal Jewish position that religion and public life must remain rigidly distinct. I . . . . Continue Reading »
Curious. Why should the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe all see fit to carry the story of the promulgation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the papal declaration on the mission of Catholic universities? On the face of it, Vatican norms for . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
