In more ordinary times, on Sunday afternoons twice a month, I can be found on the streets of New York with a dozen other singers, performing the sacred music of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe. Well, not always in the streets – on cold days in the winter we...
Church
We’re All Marsilians Now
Brad Littlejohn
No, you’re not being persecuted for your faith. But how do we cheerfully accept the church’s position of formal subordination to the state, while boldly reminding the state of its ultimate subordination to Christ?
Christian Witness and the Election
Peter Mommsen
Earlier this month, the ecumenical group Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) published a statement on Christian witness and the US elections on the website of First Things. ECT was first convened in 1995 by Richard John Neuhaus and Chuck Colson out of a desire...
Life Together in the Time of Plague
David Grubbs
David Grubbs draws on the wisdom of the Venerable Bede to remind us that we are part of the living body of believers, and we have a duty to one another and to that community.
First Things
Anne Snyder
When it comes to the social divisions of our time, it’s easy to baptize the reigning ideological currents rather than face them from a quiet core of christological insight. In this week’s feature essay, “Is God Anti-racist?,” Amy Julia Becker gropes for tools that...
Sacred Conversations
Elizabeth Oldfield
Every Thursday evening at eight, I go out onto a suburban cul-de-sac with my parents, bang a saucepan, and cry. My parents, with whom my family is staying for the duration of lockdown, are a retired NHS doctor and retired NHS nurse who have volunteered to be...
Is God Anti-racist?
Amy Julia Becker
When it comes to the social divisions of our time, rather than baptizing either the fervent individualism of the right or the punishing collectivism of the left, is the American church capable of offering a different kind of answer altogether? If not, what muscles need strengthening—and then healing—so that we can?
Whose Justice? Which Peace?
Myles Werntz
In 1525, Martin Luther addressed the peasants of Swabia who were protesting (and rioting) in response to unjust government. Was his response reasonable, or did it sacrifice justice for order? Thinking through the issues involved is a valuable way to consider what our response might be to civil unrest today. Here is Part 2 of our three-part series on the Peasants’ War and protests today.
Reading While Black
David Emmanuel Goatley
Black people often do not fit easily into popular Western European or North American paradigms. Widely accepted patterns of thought and being have for too long now been conceived and constructed by those who presume their particular worldviews to be normative for all....
The Bruderhof and the State
John Huleatt
November 1933, Hesse, Germany. The Bruderhof, a community of about 125 men, women, and children recently established on a farm in the Rhön Mountains, had just learned of a new mandate from the National Socialist government: all citizens must vote in a referendum to...