Tag: empathy
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The Scandal of White Complicity
In the national Catholic magazine America I’ve just published a short review of an important new book with a long title: The Scandal of White Complicity in U.S. Hyper-Incarceration: A White Spirituality of Resistance. It’s an effort by three Catholic thinkers to articulate the depth of white complicity in this country’s massive, highly racialized prison…
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Stop Bombing Them
Sometimes, when one belongs to the richest and most militarily over-equipped country in the world, there’s a bit of a temptation to overthink things. I was reminded of this at the end of my interview—just published at The Immanent Frame—with the great Pakistani anthropologist Saba Mahmood. I asked the tangled question of what American women…
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Oprah-atic Citizenship
I’m really excited to announce that my interview with Kathryn Lofton, one of the most creative and brilliant young scholars of religion around right now, is now up at The Immanent Frame. Katie is a historian by trade, but over the years she has also cultivated a powerful fascination with Oprah, leading to her new…
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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…
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The Right to Truth
What does it take to make reconciliation—even forgiveness—possible? Today at The Immanent Frame, I talk with Eduardo Gonzalez, a sociologist who directs the International Center for Transitional Justice’s program on truth and reconciliation commissions. Before that, he was involved in organizing and executing the commission in his native Peru. We discuss, among other things, the…
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Judith Butler’s Carefully Crafted F**k You
In the current issue of the wonderful online magazine Guernica, I’ve got an interview with none other than the critical theorist Judith Butler. Her latest book, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2009), reflects on the past decade’s saga of needless war, photographed—even fetishized—torture, and routine horror. It treats these practices as issuing from…
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Karen Armstrong’s Compassion
It’s a common refrain that one hears among those of us looking to think responsibly about the world’s religions: at bottom, they all have a common core, and the core is a genuinely good one. That would be nice, but I’ve never really bought it. To be honest, I don’t even think it would be…
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Harvey Cox and the Future of Faith
I mentioned Harvey Cox, the Harvard theologian best-known for his 1960s book The Secular City, in my recent Guardian piece on “death of God” theology. Today, at The Immanent Frame, I have an interview with him about his recent retirement ceremony, the legacy of his early-career bestseller, and his latest work, The Future of Faith,…