First Things

In June 2025 Janet Daby, the Member of Parliament for Lewisham East, started having nightmares: terrible images of death and dying that disturbed her sleep and haunted her conscience. She didn’t need a psychotherapist to interpret them. That month she had joined 313 other MPs in voting through an assisted suicide bill. She was beginning to think she might have made the wrong ...

Most Americans seem to think of the major Protestant denominations as if they were founded with the names we now use. In truth, the names were often forced by circumstance and argument. The methodical nature of the movement started by John Wesley, right down to a method of devotion, eventually led to the movement being named Methodism. The name stuck, and thus there is likely...

In this episode, Christopher Caldwell joins R. R. Reno on The Editor’s Desk to talk about his recent essay, “Why the AfD Wins” from the October 2026 issue of the magazine.

The conversation is embedded below. For your long-term convenience, subscribe via

The Golden Thread:
A History of the Western Tradition
Volume I:
The Ancient World and Christendom
by james hankins
encounter, 1,308 pages, $120

God never gives us more than we can take,”
the midwife told us, after catching two—
two—heartbeats in your sonogram. She knew
the kids we had at home and hoped to break
the news gently, I guess. These twins would make
four children under four, nearly a zoo.
We nodded, though her saying wasn’t true.
Then, driving home, we stopped to ...