The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is a cultural and religious enigma. An indigenous American religion that springs from the great American West, it was founded by the descendants of Europeans who had settled in the northeastern United States. Its practitioners, known as Mormons, . . . . Continue Reading »
It’s pledge week here at PBS. Er, I mean, First Things . I wish I did mean PBS, since then we could count on large corporate donors¯ Mobil! Exxon! Mutual of Omaha! Bob’s Big Boy! ¯to take up the slack. Unfortunately, we depend on the kindness of friends to help us continue . . . . Continue Reading »
This talk was delivered at the Path to Peace Foundation seminar “Catholic Students and the Common Good: Building a Better World” in New York on May 22, 2007. I’d like to begin with a couple of disclaimers. For the past four years, I’ve had the privilege of serving on the U.S. . . . . Continue Reading »
Well, well, well. The June/July issue of First Things has arrived, and in the annals of human endeavor it ranks somewhere around¯um, I don’t actually know. The publication of Emile Zola’s J’Accuse! maybe? Or the printing of Civilian Personnel Law Manual: Title 2, Leave, 1996 . . . . Continue Reading »
Rudy Giuliani and abortion? No big deal. As he told the folks in Iowa, we have to "get beyond" those divisive questions. The Wall Street Journal recently echoed that line of argument , so to speak. It’s not as though abortion matters the way that, for instance, corporate tax rates . . . . Continue Reading »
In Delaware, the state legislature is debating embryonic stem cell research. A copy of some correspondence about that debate recently came to us here at First Things , and it seemed worth noting.The first was a widely distributed email from Kit Schooley, a liberal Presbyterian minister whose wife . . . . Continue Reading »
What shall we do for a bogeyman, now that our grand old monster is dead?Jerry Falwell has passed away, his death leading news reports yesterday . And nearly all the obituaries this morning remind us that he really was, most of the time, a symbol rather a man. Or not a symbol, exactly, but a . . . . Continue Reading »
When the International Criminal Court (ICC) came into being in April 2002, the delegates to its U.N. preparatory meeting stood and applauded. The court’s proponents were convinced that it would finally provide the remedy for “impunity” in international affairs by establishing criminal . . . . Continue Reading »
The dirty Darwinian secret is now out of the closet: If evolution is true, then it must be true about everything. Most Darwinians used to be very restrained about the relevance of their theory for cultural and moral issues, for obvious reasons. If evolution is true about everything, then randomness . . . . Continue Reading »
Of course, the literal meaning of potpourri is "rotten pot," but it has come to refer to a miscellany of flowers, foods, or ideas. In this miscellany, the first item is definitely not the most important. But we’ll take things as they’ve been plopped into the pot. There was a . . . . Continue Reading »
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