jollibee777.Plot777,777pnl

Posts

Posts are syndicated across various social media networks—find them here and join the discussion.

  • The Life of the Immortals

    The philosopher Patrick Lee Miller has an intriguing new book out—Becoming God—which I’ve been privileged to follow from the dissertation stage some time ago. It’s a daring philosophical argument wrapped up in a close reading of ancient texts. In the pre-Socratic thinker Heraclitus, he finds an alternative to the most cherished axiom of philosophy, from…

  • The Kabul Scarf

    It’s New Year’s Eve, and last night my colleague at Waging Nonviolence, Eric Stoner, returned safely from Afghanistan. He was there as a journalist and activist with an envoy of peacemakers, meeting networks of Afghans and internationals who are working to end the endless war, to which so many young people in that country have…

  • Gods Must Die to Live

    I’ve been meaning to share this for a while; it’s an arresting passage from C. S. Lewis that came to me on a page sent to my by a friend, a Trappist monk, on the subject I’ve been touching on from time to time here (and here), truth and mythology: The gods—and, of course, I…

  • Doing Theology

    At The Immanent Frame today, I interview Charles Villa-Vicencio, a theologian who served as National Research Director for the historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission in his native South Africa. We discuss peacebuilding, forgiveness, and the kind of spirituality that he sees emerging in his country as part of the challenge of building a new nation.…

  • What Good Are Good Arguments?

    Do good arguments end up carrying the day? If not, what else is at play? Today at The Immanent Frame, I interview Colin Jager, professor of English at Rutgers and an authority on natural theology in British romanticism. He’s the author of, literally, The Book of God. Our conversation touches on many things swirling through…

  • The God of This World

    Isn’t it obvious that God, or at least our idea of God, needs saving as much as we do? He—forgive me if necessary for saying “He”—has been run through the mud by terrorists, televangelists, New Atheists, and grandmothers’ guilt. The rest of us are supposed to have a relationship with this guy? Or even just…

  • The Truth in Myth

    There’s this passage toward the end of the all-important book XII of Aristotle’s Metaphysics that I keep coming back to, one of those bits that reaches out of its antiquity and walks among us. Book XII is where Aristotle’s account of the world beyond physics reaches up from the chains of causes acting on causes…

  • Will Boycotting Mass Spur Reform?

    What would happen if, one Sunday morning, the Catholic hordes stayed home from mass in protest? Would the priests listen to the people’s demands? Or would they carry on without us? Over the weekend I had an essay at Religion Dispatches about an elderly Irish woman who proposed just such a protest in order to…

  • Studying Religion Is Revolutionary in China

    Like pretty much everything else over there right now, religion is a growth industry in China. After decades of official repression a whole bunch of new religious movements—and, even more, new forms of old religions—are gathering steam. Trying to get a handle on this from back here in New York, I did an interview with…

  • Apolitical Heresies

    Yesterday the folks over at The Guardian’s Belief section asked me to weigh in on their question of the week, and for better or worse I sacrificed most of the day’s opportunity for book-writing on the altar of Welcome Distraction. The question is: “Can religion be apolitical?” What they have in mind, being British and…