First Things & the Future of Religious Conservatism

First Things editor Rusty Reno’s meltdown the other night on Twitter (he’s now deleted those tweets, by the way) occasioned a lot of messaging among fellow Christian conservatives in my circles, all of whom are worried about the magazine and its future. I heard from one young friend who is part of the broad circles of Millennial and Gen Z conservatives and trads on the East Coast — the kind of people who have either published in First Things, or who aspire to. He said that most of them have decided that given its editor’s embrace of Covid-19 crankishness (e.g., calling mask-wearers cowards), it is too risky to their reputations to publish in First Things. This is a terrible sign for the magazine, but the crisis of First Things is a symbol of the broader crisis of intellectual Christian conservatism attempting to engage modernity, and to participate in the public square — which is exactly why First Things was founded, and how it sees its mission. My point is that the First Things crisis — if you can call it a “crisis,” and I think you can — is not just a crisis for that magazine, but it symbolizes a broader and deeper crisis on the intellectual Christian Right.