First Things is published by the New York–based Institute on Religion and Public Life (IRPL) as a monthly, except for bi-monthly issues covering June/July and August/September,[2] and has a circulation of approximately 30,000 copies. First Things' founding editor, from 1990 to his death in 2009, was Richard John Neuhaus. Since 2011 R. R. Reno has served as editor.
Ross Douthat wrote that, through First Things, Neuhaus demonstrated "that it was possible to be an intellectually fulfilled Christian".[3]George Weigel, a long-time contributor and IRPL board member, wrote in Newsweek that, under the influence of Neuhaus First Things had "quickly became, under his leadership and inspiration, the most important vehicle for exploring the tangled web of religion and society in the English-speaking world."[4]
History
First Things was founded in March 1990 by Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran pastor turned Catholic priest, intellectual, writer and activist. He started the journal, along with some long-time friends and collaborators, after he left the Rockford Institute.[5]
In 1996, in response to the Colorado Supreme Court's decision in Romer v. Evans which the magazine's leaders correctly predicted the Supreme Court of the United States would uphold on appeal, First Things published a symposium titled "The End of Democracy?" which denounced the ruling and included an essay by Charles Colson which called for a violent uprising against the United States government.[6] The symposium was widely denounced by the mainstream press and more moderate conservatives including Midge Decter who screamed at Neuhaus in a telephone call, and David Brooks, and the resignation of editorial board members Gertrude Himmelfarb and Walter Berns.[6]
Neuhaus, the journal's editor-in-chief until his death in January 2009, wrote columns called "The Public Square" and "While We're At It". Three editors served under Neuhaus: James Nuechterlein, a Lutheran, from 1990 to 2004; Damon Linker, who converted from Judaism to Catholicism, from 2004 to 2005, when he left over disagreements with the editor-in-chief (he later published The Theocons, a book very critical of Neuhaus);[7][8]Joseph Bottum, a Catholic, from 2005, upon returning from The Weekly Standard.[9] After his death, Neuhaus was thus succeeded by Bottum.[10] Bottum served through October 2010, when he was forced out after a controversy about the future and the funding of the magazine, and Nuechterlein returned from retirement to become interim editor.[11][12] In April 2011, R. R. Reno, a professor of theology and ethics at Creighton University, who had been involved with the magazine for over a decade and was a Catholic convert from the Episcopal Church, was selected by the IRPL board as editor.[13][14][15] After Neuhaus's death, David P. Goldman, David Blum, David Mills, Midge Decter (ad interim), Mark Bauerlein, Matthew Schmitz, Julia Yost and Dan Hitchens have served as executive or senior editors. The latter two are currently in office.
In 2018, First Things published a review by Romanus Cessario, OP of Vittorio Messori's book Kidnapped by the Vatican? The Unpublished Memoirs of Edgardo Mortara, on the case of Eugenio Mortara, a Jewish boy who was mistakenly baptized by nuns who believed his parents were dead and kidnapped by the Vatican, on the grounds that anyone who was baptized had to be raised Catholic. Cessario wrote that "Divine Providence kindly arranged for his being introduced into a regular Christian life."[16] Catholic writer Michael Sean Winters called the article "morally repugnant" and "intellectually deplorable", while First Things regular contributor Robert P. George described it as "an embarrassment".[17]
Governance
First Things is run by the board of the Institute on Religion and Public Life (IRPL), which is chaired by Colin Moran and whose members include, among others, Russell Hittinger, David Novak, George Weigel and Robert Louis Wilken (former chairman), as of January 2023.[1] Similarly to Richard John Neuhaus, Wilken is a former Lutheran minister converted to the Catholic Church.[18][19] The pair first met at the Lutheran Concordia College of Texas in 1953, became friends, graduated in 1955 and earned the master of Divinity at Concordia Seminary in 1960.
Former members of the editorial board include neoconservatives Gertrude Himmelfarb and Peter L. Berger, who resigned in November 1996 amid "The End of Democracy?" controversy,[20] Methodist theologian Stanley Hauerwas, who resigned in February 2002 in protest with the journal's stance on the War on terror,[21][22] and Mary Ann Glendon, Catholic jurist and former United States Ambassador to the Holy See. Both Berger, a Lutheran, and Hauerwas continued to publish articles in the journal also after their resignation from the editorial board.
The journal used to have an advisory council (appointed by the institute board). In mid 2017 it included, among others, neoconservative writer Midge Decter; historian Wilfred M. McClay; philosophers Hadley Arkes and Robert P. George; political scientist Timothy Fuller; Christian theologians or biblicists Gary A. Anderson (Methodist), Thomas Sieger Derr (Congregationalist), Timothy George (Baptist), Terryl Givens (Latter-day Saint), Chad Hatfield (Eastern Orthodox), Robert Jenson (Lutheran), Peter Leithart (Presbyterian), Cornelius Plantinga (Dutch Reformed) and Ephraim Radner (Anglican); Jewish scholars David G. Dalin and Eric Cohen, founding editor of The New Atlantis; physicist Stephen Barr; and Mark C. Henrie, president of the Arthur N. Rupe Foundation and former Chief Academic Officer and Senior Vice-president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.[23][24][25] Until his death in February 2017, the council included also theologian and writer Michael Novak,[25] who, along with fellow Catholics Neuhaus and Weigel, was part of the so-called "neoconservative trinity", according to critics.[26][27]
Until 2010, the journal also had a finance committee, whose latest members were William Burleigh, Frederic Clark, Robert P. George, Peter Thiel and George Weigel.[28]
Beginning in May 2017 Shalom Carmy, an Orthodox rabbi teaching Jewish studies and philosophy at Yeshiva University (where he is Chair of Bible and Jewish philosophy at Yeshiva College and an affiliated scholar at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law) as well as editor of Tradition, wrote a regular column named "Litvak at Large".[34] In the August/September 2021 issue, Carmy's column was taken over by Liel Leibovitz, writing under a column named "Leibovitz at Large". Carmy continued to be a frequent contributor of First Things.
To this day, R. R. Reno has continued Richard John Neuhaus's columns called "The Public Square" and "While We're At It" and each issue of First Things hosts poetry.
The magazine publishes articles every day in the "Web Exclusives" section of its website.[35]
Joseph Louis Bernardin was an American Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of Cincinnati from 1972 until 1982, and as Archbishop of Chicago from 1982 until his death in 1996 from pancreatic cancer. Bernardin was elevated to the cardinalate in 1983 by Pope John Paul II.
Richard John Neuhaus was a prominent writer and Christian cleric.
Paleo-orthodoxy is a Protestant Christian theological movement in the United States which emerged in the late 20th and early 21st centuries and which focuses on the consensual understanding of the faith among the ecumenical councils and Church Fathers. While it understands this consensus of the Church Fathers as orthodoxy proper, it calls itself paleo-orthodoxy to distinguish itself from neo-orthodoxy, a movement that was influential among Protestant churches in the mid-20th century.
Stanley Martin Hauerwas is an American theologian, ethicist, and public intellectual. Hauerwas originally taught at the University of Notre Dame before moving to Duke University. Hauerwas was a longtime professor at Duke, serving as the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School with a joint appointment at the Duke University School of Law. In the fall of 2014, he also assumed a chair in theological ethics at the University of Aberdeen. Hauerwas is considered by many to be one of the world's most influential living theologians and was named "America's Best Theologian" by Time magazine in 2001. He was also the first American theologian to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in over forty years. His work is frequently read and debated by scholars in fields outside of religion or ethics, such as political philosophy, sociology, history, and literary theory. Hauerwas has achieved notability outside of academia as a public intellectual, even appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
George Weigel is an American Catholic neoconservative author, political analyst, and social activist. He currently serves as a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Weigel was the Founding President of the James Madison Foundation. He is the author of a best-selling biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope, and Tranquillitas Ordinis: The Present Failure and Future Promise of American Catholic Thought on War and Peace.
David G. Dalin is an American rabbi and historian, and the author, co-author, or editor of twelve books on American Jewish history and politics, and Jewish-Christian relations.
The term Evangelical Catholic is used in Lutheranism, alongside the terms Augsburg Catholic or Augustana Catholic, with those calling themselves Evangelical Catholic Lutherans or Lutherans of Evangelical Catholic churchmanship stressing the catholicity of historic Lutheranism in liturgy, beliefs, practices, and doctrines. Evangelical Catholics teach that Lutheranism at its core "is deeply and fundamentally catholic". The majority of Evangelical Catholic Lutheran clergy and parishes are members of mainstream Lutheran denominations.
High church Lutheranism is a movement that began in 20th-century Europe and emphasizes worship practices and doctrines that are similar to those found within Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Anglo-Catholicism. In the more general usage of the term, it describes the general high church characteristics of Lutheranism in Nordic and Baltic countries such as Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Latvia. The mentioned countries, once a part of the Swedish Empire, have more markedly preserved Catholic traditions.
Reinhard Hütter is a Christian theologian and Professor of Fundamental and Dogmatic Theology at The Catholic University of America and Visiting Professor of Catholic Theology at Duke Divinity School. During the 2012–2013 academic year, he held The Rev. Robert J. Randall Professor in Christian Culture chair at Providence College.
Neoconservatism and paleoconservatism are two major branches of the American conservative political movement. Representatives of each faction often argue that the other does not represent true conservatism. Disputed issues include immigration, trade, the United States Constitution, taxation, budget, business, the Federal Reserve, drug policy, foreign aid and the foreign policy of the United States.
George Arthur Lindbeck was an American Lutheran theologian. He was best known as an ecumenicist and as one of the fathers of postliberal theology.
"Evangelicals and Catholics Together" is a 1994 ecumenical document signed by leading Evangelical and Catholic scholars in the United States. The co-signers of the document were Charles Colson and Richard John Neuhaus, representing each side of the discussions. It was part of a larger ecumenical rapprochement in the United States that had begun in the 1970s with Catholic-Evangelical collaboration and in later para-church organizations such as Moral Majority founded by Jerry Falwell at the urging of Francis Schaeffer and his son Frank Schaeffer.
Christopher Kennedy Huebner is an associate professor of theology and philosophy at Canadian Mennonite University, as well as co-editor of Herald Press's Polyglossia series.
Garrick Davis is an American poet and critic. He was Poetry Editor of First Things magazine from 2020 until 2021.
Russell Ronald Reno III, known as R. R. Reno or Rusty Reno, is an American theologian and the editor of First Things magazine. He was formerly a professor of theology and ethics at Creighton University.
The history of the Germans in Baltimore began in the 17th century. During the 19th century, the Port of Baltimore was the second-leading port of entry for immigrants, after Ellis Island in New York City. Many Germans immigrated to Baltimore during this time.
Joseph Bottum is an American author and intellectual, best known for his writings about literature, American religion, and neoconservative politics. Noting references to his poems, short stories, scholarly work, literary criticism, and many other forms of public commentary, reviewer Mary Eberstadt wrote in National Review in 2014 that “his name would be mandatory on any objective short list of public intellectuals” in the United States. Coverage of his work includes profiles in The New York Times, South Dakota Magazine, and The Washington Times. In 2017, Bottum took a position at Dakota State University in Madison, South Dakota.
For All the Saints: A Prayer Book for and by the Church is a breviary used in the Lutheran tradition. It is used daily to pray the canonical hours at fixed prayer times. It is bound in four volumes and follows the lectionary of the Lutheran Book of Worship. For All the Saints: A Prayer Book for and by the Church has prayers and readings from the Old Testament, Epistles and Gospels with a commentary on them. The breviary covers the entire Christian Bible in a two-year cycle.
Robert Louis Wilken is an American historian and former Lutheran minister who is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of the History of Christianity emeritus at the University of Virginia.
↑ "First Things - About Us: Masthead". archive.org. 27 May 2009. Archived from the original on 27 May 2009. Retrieved 5 September 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
↑ "About Us: Masthead - First Things". archive.org. 31 December 2010. Archived from the original on 31 December 2010. Retrieved 5 September 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
↑ "About First Things". archive.org. 12 April 1997. Archived from the original on 12 April 1997. Retrieved 5 September 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
↑ "About First Things". archive.org. 9 January 1998. Archived from the original on 9 January 1998. Retrieved 5 September 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
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