Sunday Spotlight: 2025

2025 was First Things’ thirty-fifth year of publication. From the (recent) archive, four authors reflect on Christian Civilization, how an illiterate society differs politically from a literate one, Pope Francis’s legacy, and London’s native population.

FROM THE JANUARY 2025 ISSUE

Against Christian Civilization

PAUL KINGSNORTH

When we read the life of Jesus of Nazareth, it is impossible not to see a man who was, in some fundamental sense, uncivilized. He did not tell us to get good jobs and save prudently.

FROM THE AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2025 ISSUE

The King and the Swarm

MARY HARRINGTON

A bitter struggle has erupted over how best to shape the post-print (which is to say post-liberal, post-democratic) political order.

FROM THE JUNE/JULY 2025 ISSUE

Francis in Full

ROBERT BARRON

The great Catholic surrender to the demands of the culture didn’t happen on his watch, and it was amusing in the extreme to watch the mainstream liberal Catholic media try to come to terms with this.

FROM THE NOVEMBER 2025 ISSUE

Indigenous London

LOUISE PERRY

Ex-Londoners take every opportunity to signal their opposition to further mass immigration, voting Leave in 2016 and now supporting Reform. The cockneys left London without much fuss, but now their backs are to the sea.