Category: Posts
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Stout’s Folly of Secularism
I’d like to share this little bit. It’s just about the only academic paper that has almost made me cry, and I don’t even quite know why; when I heard it delivered at last year’s American Academy of Religion meeting in San Diego, most of my friends there didn’t think much of it. I guess…
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Dialogue in the Dark
It totally slipped my notice that, a couple days ago, Religion Dispatches posted my latest article, a review of Michael Novak’s No One Sees God. This one, unfortunately, may inspire more ire from the anti-atheists. But I promise, I genuinely tried to move a more sensible conversation forward on all sides. Take a look at…
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Rampage in Minneapolis
A dear friend of mine, Nicole Salazar, was peacefully filming protests at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis when police in riot gear assaulted her, cornered her, and dragged her on the ground before arresting her and charging her with a felony. Here is the horrifying video she recorded during the assault: The next day…
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Me on 3QD
I guess I can die and go to heaven now. An article of mine, “What Happens to Religion When It Is Biologized,” was just picked up by the fabulous filter blog 3QuarksDaily. See it here!
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A Compassionate Consensus
As an alternative to the knee-jerk policy dogmas that give liberalism a bad name, an attitude of compassion was seemingly given the Democratic imprimatur the other night in Barack Obama’s stunning nomination acceptance speech. That’s the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as…
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Learning to Be Heard
The New Yorker has a remarkable piece in today’s issue by the composer John Adams, a tear-jerker for any creator trying to get somewhere. Adams follows the course of his early career as he moves from avant-garde esotericism and bad reviews to orchestral works that interested both him and audiences alike. If you’ll read the…
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History Marches On
Out of a kind of knee-jerk duty, I have always taken exception to Francis Fukuyama’s infamous “end of history” thesis—the idea that democratic capitalism is the final step of human political development and that all we are waiting for is the world to catch up (even Fukuyama has distanced himself from it). But a recent…
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Critics, Critique, and LAWMAKERS
I’d like to invite you, if you’ll be in New York this weekend, to see the final performance of WE ARE THE LAWMAKERS, a daring play of political chaos directed by my dear friend, Marc Andreottola. It is part of this year’s New York International Film Festival and will be playing Saturday, August 23 at…
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Do You Believe in Mother God?
Yesterday evening in Washington Square Park (or what’s left of it), just after getting off the phone with my mother, a man and a woman approached me and asked if I knew about God the Mother. At first, forgetting myself, I said I didn’t want to have that conversation. Thankfully, the man (who did all…