This piece will appear in the November 2026 issue of First Things. How would you write a public letter that you know will become front-page news? Would you write it yourself, or would you have a team ...

We wish that we could pass this play over, and say nothing about it. All that we can say must fall far short of the subject; or even of what we ourselves conceive of it.” So William Hazlitt, in ...

In a life of reading, there are special times of wonder and delight. Books come into your hands that address your central concerns and discuss matters you’ve long pondered. But they do so in fresh and ...

Pundits tell us that we are moving beyond the culture wars. Left and right are merging in their common judgment that liberalism has reached a dead end. Something new is emerging. Maybe. My sense is ...

It used to be that if you died horribly and honorably and happened to be a person… ...

Madi grew up in a religious home, blessed with attentive parents who took the dangers of technology seriously. They installed filters on her devices and required her to hand in her phone every night.

The memories are still vivid, even though it was a long time ago. Having been born in 1956, I’m just old enough to remember the confusing and tumultuous era of “the changes” that came after the Second ...

During the fall semester of 2013, I began to teach a new course here at Yale: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition. Even though the course had no track record (and therefore no student evaluations), ...

Before London was a global city, it was just a city, and people lived there. Across its two-thousand-year history, London has always had a working class. In the sixteenth century, that class acquired ...

William Lane Craig has recently caused some consternation by saying he does not confess the faith of the Nicene Creed. The reaction is understandable. Nicene orthodoxy, after all, is the faith ...

Last spring, some of my graduating seniors felt obligated to take me aside before graduation, as if I were a naive child, and pronounce a dark truth in the era of widely available AI technology: You ...

St. Paul’s Cathedral has come up with a novel way to fill the pews: It is becoming a concert venue. Under a newly inked agreement, London nightclub Fabric will be the “exclusive partner for ...