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Imserba Webstore - First Things
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List Price: $49.50
Our Price: $19.95
Your Save: $ 29.55 ( 60% )
Availability: Usually ships in 1 to 3 months
Manufacturer: Religion and Public Life
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Magazine
First Issue Lead Time: 6-10
Format: Magazine Subscription
Issues Per Year: 10
Label: Religion and Public Life
Magazine Type: Consumer magazine
Manufacturer: Religion and Public Life
Number Of Issues: 10
Publisher: Religion and Public Life
Studio: Religion and Public Life
Subscription Length: 365
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Editorial Reviews:
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First Things is a journal of ideas that examines the most interesting -- and often controversial -- issues arising at the crossroads of religion and public life today. It begins with the premise that to understand American society -- and where it is headed it is necessary to understand its religious life and values.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Simply the best
Comment: The journal "First Things" fills an important niche in the intellectual landscape of the ever-changing marketplace of ideas. It is, as its description states "the journal of religion, culture, and public life." In my humble opinion the definite article in the description is well deserved since "First Things" has positioned itself as the definitive journal on those three subjects and especially on their intersection and interplay. The ordering of the importance those three subjects from the description also reflects more or less accurately how prominently they are covered in the pages of the "First Things." The journal has gained considerable reputation for its unapologetic stance on the role of religion in public life, especially when it comes to politics. This is one of the thorniest issues that is often misunderstood: religion, just like any other ethical system, can and should inform those decisions that are relevant for the common good.
The editor-in-chief of the magazine is father Richard John Neuhaus. He is a public intellectual par excellence and someone whose opinion and knowledge I admire a great deal. His mega-column/article "The Public Square" is a regular feature in every issue of the "First Things."
Besides "The Public Square" each issue of "First Things" has several lengthy in-depth articles, a few shorter opinion pieces, book reviews, correspondence and poems. Over the years contributors to the "First Things" have included Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), Avery Cardinal Dulles, Christoph Schönborn, George Weigel, Stephen Webb, R. R. Reno, Timothy George, Stephen Barr, Joseph Bottum, Michael Novak, and many, many others.
All past issues of "First Things" (older than two months) can be found on the journal's website (www.firstthings.com) and I would strongly urge anyone who is interested in finding out more about this wonderful publication to visit the website. In addition, the website features a daily blog article that cannot be found in the journal itself.
Customer Rating:
Summary: It's the top: intellectual, funny, and religious all at once
Comment: If you have never picked up a copy of "First Things" you need to do so today. There is simply nothing else even remotely like it. No amount of praise could be too lavish for this magazine.
"First Things" an interfaith religious magazine. Yes, I said religious, a word hovering on the brink of the suspect list lately. The magazine does lean to Catholic and Protestant issues, although I have read articles by Jewish writers as well.
In this month's issue (May 08) there are articles on whether or not Shakespeare was Catholic, the ethics of immigration, a very interesting article on marriage, and a warm and personal reflection on William F Buckley. Also a comparison between hard-core atheists like Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx, and the new, soft-core atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens, who call God evil, even though "in order to make such value judgements one must assume, as the hard-core atheists are honest enough to acknowledge, that there exists somewhere, in some mode of being, a realm of rightness that does not owe its existence completely to human invention, Darwinian selection, or social construction (p 75).
You need it to keep abreast of the gossip about the breakup of your favorite mainline denomination and the outrages of liturgical dumb bunnies! To cleanse your mind after an hour spent watching the bilge that television producers call entertainment! To keep your sanity as western civilization collapses!
You need it as a gift to a student leaving to be brainwashed in one of our universities.
You need it as the perfect gift for those atheist friends of yours who claim all believers are barely sentient.
And, of course, it is an obviously necessary gift to yourself.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: First Things First Rate!
Comment: First Things magazine is a valuable guide to faith, culture & world events. It represents eccumanism of CS Lewis' "Mere Christianity" veriety, not of the lowest common denominator.
If you want to know what commited & intelligent believers are thinking & talking about, look no further!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not the best, but VERY VERY good
Comment: I wouldn't say this is the best in Christian scholarship like one review, but it is not some fluffy piece of crap either. This journal is generally quite challenging and interesting to read. It may not be respected as the most academically rigorous journal out there, but it is very accessible to relatively unread laity who are interested in stretching their views and understanding of the issues of religion in the public sphere.
It does lean on the conservative side, but that's a nice counter to a few of the liberal academic journals that think all inerrantists are superstitious hicks.
I do appreciate the inter-disciplinary nature of the authors - there seem to be contributors from the fields of religious studies, political science, actual clergy, and others.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Don't leave home without this intellectual journal.
Comment: First Things editor Richard John Neuhaus is famous for two things.
First, his intellectual and spiritual pilgrimage from liberal orthodoxy to Missouri Synod Lutheranism and then home to Roman Catholic faith has provided a point of reference and occasional road map to fellow travelers.
Then, his popularization of the diagnostic phrase 'the naked public square' to refer to a secularized pseudo-democracy where the voice of articulate faith is not welcome - together with his eventual championship of First Things from the editor's chair - has made him something of an icon among thoughtful religious conservatives in North America and beyond.
All with good reason.
Under Neuhaus' principled, witty, and occasional hilarious guidance, First Things has become a must-read for reviewers like this one (and his wife, who snatches it away to read when she collects the mail first and then delivers it to her beloved a month late and ragged of edge) who believe that a thoughtfully articulated traditional orthodoxy is not synonymous with obscurantism or bigotry.
The tone is substantially Roman Catholic, though evangelicals, Orthodox, and Jewish writers pepper its pages with their contributions on a regular and more than marginal basis.
The journal could be categorized as 'neocon' for its confident appraisal of an assertive international role for the United States, not out of any naive theo-nationalism, but rather from a position that empires come and go and that the more benign of them are to be critically welcomed for their contribution to peace and justice in a world where idealisms seldom accomplish either.
A highlight for many readers is Neuhaus' 'While We're At It' section in each issue's final pages. The the editor engages in delicious debunking of (usually but not exclusively leftist) utopianisms that rail against all things traditional and common sensical without recognizing that poverty which offers no useful alternative.
Highbrow, curmudgeonly, vibrant, self-confident, and immersed in the Great Conversation even when it engages adversaries who didn't know there was one, First Things is the leading thought journal for people who enjoy, engage, and accumulate a largeness of spirit in a context where good things are taken seriously and banality has a name.
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