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** Daily Newsletter: October 8, 2025
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** In today’s newsletter:
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MOUNEER ANIS: Sarah Mullally and Reforming the Anglican Communion ([link removed])
BELLA M. REYES: Power Fatigue and the Soft Womanhood of Taylor Swift ([link removed])
GEORGE WEIGEL: The Problem(s) with “LGBTQ Catholic ([link removed]) ”
NEIL ROGACHEVSKY: Athens, Sparta, and the Future of Israel ([link removed])
Welcome to the new and improved Daily Newsletter from First Things. Our content isn’t going to change drastically—we’ll still bring you the new articles each day, straight to your inbox.
Now, we'll also connect new articles to the larger conversations First Things has been leading for thirty-five years.
And if you don’t want to read all that, the new articles are listed at the top.
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** Sarah Mullally and Reforming the Anglican Communion ([link removed])
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** Mouneer Anis
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Former Anglican Archbishop of Alexandria, Egypt Mouneer Anis writes today that the appointment of Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury “effectively distances” the Church of England from “the vast majority of Anglicans in the Global South, who have consistently upheld the traditional Christian teachings on marriage and ordination.” Orthodox Anglicans need to “reorganize” so that their churches reflect the views of their adherents.
For further reading: In 2023, the gap between the progressive Church of England and members of the global Anglican communion widened when Canterbury permitted blessings of same-sex unions. Anglican leaders in the Global South (representing 85 percent of all Anglicans) rejected the decision outright, and said they could no longer recognize the archbishop (then Justin Welby), as “first among equals.” Anis wrote about this in his essay “Anglicanism at a Crossroads ([link removed]) .” Anglican priest Gerald McDermott explained how the fault lines formed in “A New Divide in Global Anglicanism ([link removed]) .”
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** Power Fatigue and the Soft Womanhood of Taylor Swift ([link removed])
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** Bella M. Reyes
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Since Taylor Swift’s engagement to Travis Kelce, every culture watcher wants to know if this means she’s ready to settle down. That’s exactly what Swift is asking herself on her latest album The Life of a Showgirl, writes Bella M. Reyes: “What if the ultimate showgirl dreams not of another encore, but of home, marriage, children—the things contemporary culture has taught ambitious women to outgrow?” Despite her fame and fortune, Swift has “long let slip small signs of discomfort with the fractured demands of modern womanhood and the pressure to be endlessly self-sufficient.”
For further reading: Perhaps the best article ever written on Taylor Swift in these pages or elsewhere was in our November 2024 issue. In “Taylor Swift’s Sexual Revolution ([link removed]) ,” Patricia Snow illustrates how the failures of the sexual revolution inform Swift’s art: “Submerged in the lyrics of her songs is a dialectic between an ideology that passes itself off as unassailable and the evidence of actual experience.”
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** The Problem(s) with “LGBTQ Catholic” ([link removed])
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** George Weigel
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In his Wednesday column, George Weigel opens with an amusing anecdote about First Things founder Richard John Neuhaus that segways into an argument against the incoherent phrase “LGBTQ Catholic.” It is wrong for Christians to use their libido as an identity. He writes, “It’s just as untoward to speak of ‘heterosexual Catholics’ as it is of “LGBTQ Catholics.” Why? Because ‘you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3:28) and subdividing Catholics this way fractures the unity of the Church.”
For further reading: On the theme of “heterosexual Catholics,” look no further than the provocatively titled essay “Against Heterosexuality ([link removed]) ” by Michael W. Hannon. This 2014 article argues that the entire gay-straight binary is unhelpful in understanding and enforcing sexual morality: “Christian compatriots of mine are wrong to cling so tightly to sexual orientation, confusing our unprecedented and unsuccessful apologia for chastity with its eternal foundation. We do not need ‘heteronormativity’ to defend against debauchery. On the contrary, it is just getting in our way.”
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** Athens, Sparta, and the Future of Israel ([link removed])
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** Neil Rogachevsky
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Two years into the war, Israel’s military victories have come at the cost of Western public opinion. Neil Rogachevsky, professor of Israel studies and Jewish thought at the University of Florida, analyzes the trade-offs the Jewish state has made to survive.
For further reading: David Novak wrote about Israel’s internal struggle over its future when its survival seemed sure at the turn of the millennium in “The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul ([link removed]) .”
Upcoming Events
* November 2, 2025: A Night of Poetry with Ben Myers | New York, NY. Register here ([link removed]) . ([link removed])
* November 3, 2025: The 38th Annual Erasmus Lecture: In Praise of Translation | New York, NY. Register here. ([link removed])
* November 11, 2025: Lecture at the University of Dallas | Irving, TX. Details coming soon.
* January 9, 2026: Second Annual Neuhaus Lecture at the New College of Florida | Sarasota, FL. Details coming soon.
Until next time.
Virginia Aabram's signature
** VIRGINIA AABRAM
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Newsletter Editor
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