March 2011
America’s Most Influential Journal of Religion and Public Life
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Letters
Conservative Liberalism or Liberal Conservatism? I am grateful to James Kalb for his thoughtful and respectful engagement…
Real Death, Real Dignity
He was a dignified man suffering all the embarrassing ways a hospice deals with the body’s failure…
RJN and First Things
This issue marks the beginning of First Things ’ twenty-second year of publication, and every new publishing…
Reading the Bible with the Reformers
For the reformers the Bible was a treasure trove of divine wisdom to be heard, read, marked,…
Thomas Merton and Confucianism
I’m not sure when I first met Tom Merton. It was probably in the middle of my…
Newman’s Ideal University
Imagine you’ve just read Plato’s Republic and then—conscientious citizen that you’ve now become—you enter a Chicago voting…
Whig History at Eighty
It is odd that in the many recent discussions about what it might mean to pursue a…
Blurring Sexual Boundaries
The definition of gender-related discrimination and of “hate crimes” is becoming ever more imaginative on both sides…
The Dialectic and the Double Helix
While a graduate student in history in the 1990s, I once asked a German friend what she…
Paradoxical Portraits
Blessed and Beautiful: Picturing the Saints by Robert Kiely Yale, 288 pages, $40 n What I discovered,”…
Can We Know What We Know?
Mathematics and Religion: Our Languages of Sign and Symbol by Javier Leach Templeton, 188 pages, $19.95 n…
The Business of Medicine
White Coat, Black Hat:Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine by carl elliott beacon, 213 pages, $21.95…
Giving Caesar His Due
Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom by peter leithart ivp academic,…
Whooshing Through Life
All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age by hubert dreyfus…
Late Night
Late orange light reflected from the lake Leaps up into the mountain’s shade, And suddenly a crouching…
At Stake
Brave luminaries, Jan Hus and William Tyndale, Were made to glow like scrolling leaves on Kindle, Snuffed…
Dear Juan de la Cruz
I gave my class your “dark night” poem to read, not telling them who wrote it. They…
Outings
If you don’t have it in your own backyard, go find it somewhere else. Outings are good…
Govett’s Leap
Looking across to Bridal Veil Falls, You feel your weight’s Free will against the fence Urging you…
Drought Breaker
Two years of drought seem broken by a deluge that would be the wrath of God were…
Manna
Open your mouth To feed that flesh Your teeth have bled Tongue us out Bone by bone…
