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I’ve been editing this fine publication for more than a decade. Looking back, I’m filled with gratitude for our founder, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. I’m not the kind of person who has the imagination and determination to launch new initiatives and publications. Neuhaus was, and all of us are in his debt.
Recently, I was in Chile. My hosts expressed a great envy that religious conservatives in the United States have First Things, a confident and influential voice for natural and supernatural truths. When I’ve traveled elsewhere, I’ve heard similar things. Religious without apology, combative without bitterness, winsome without compromise, what Fr. Neuhaus founded is unique in the West.
December is the most important month of the year for First Things. In just a few short weeks, we must raise the lion’s share of the donations necessary for us to continue our important work. I ask you to consider a donation to do your part.
In the opening chapters of the Book of Proverbs, Lady Wisdom finds herself in a city not unlike our own. The men are bewitched by prostitutes and loose women who lead them astray, a metaphor for a society that is disordered by false loves. Lady Wisdom warns. She stands on a soapbox, raging against perversion, error, and falsehood. But no one pays her heed. Retreating to her place, Lady Wisdom adopts a different strategy. She prepares a sumptuous banquet, and then sends her most beautiful maidens to the street corners to invite the men of the city to come and feast at her table. Only then does the city discard its perversions and come to Lady Wisdom to be led on the path toward righteousness.
As editor of First Things, I try to follow this biblical pattern. Yes, we must counter the falsehoods of our time, the notion that unborn children are not persons, the conceit that men can marry men, the illusion that girls can become boys, and other disordered and misguided conceptions. But the “yes” of truth is far more powerful than its contradicting “no.” In our pages and on our website, we seek to allow truth to speak in all its radiance. As Liel Leibovitz often says, in so many words, our aim is to attract and convert.
These are difficult times. Woke revolutionaries seek to transform our society, and they think nothing of ruining lives and careers in pursuit of their utopian dream of a society of limitless affirmation and inclusion. But I do not despair. Nearly 30,000 people subscribe to First Things. Nearly four million more read online. We are a community of truth-seekers and truth-tellers, undaunted and unafraid. Our witness will make a difference. It already does.
Please support First Things. Make a donation today. Your financial contribution will help us prepare Lady Wisdom’s sumptuous banquet and feed a secular world starved for truth.
R. R. Reno is editor of First Things.
Resist junk food journalism. Support journalism that nourishes the mind and soul by contributing to our year-end campaign today.
Image by Floris Van Dyck via Wikimedia Commons licensed via Creative Commons. Image cropped.
