Tag: New York City
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Ten Years of War, Three Weeks of Occupation
Today—or yesterday, depending on how you count it—marks a decade since the ongoing war on Afghanistan began. Tomorrow marks the end of the third week since the occupation of Liberty Plaza near Wall Street began. The first might be an utterly solemn occasion were it not for the second. And were it not, also, for…
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#AmericanAutumn
Over at Waging Nonviolence, I’ve been doing a bunch of coverage of some of the big protest actions being planned this fall, efforts to turn people’s attention away from the nonsense straw polls and candidate posturing and onto masses of people in the streets. I’ve been going to planning meetings for both those intending to…
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What’s at Stake in The Tree of Life?
If you’re into getting worked up about semi-artsy movies, the one you’re supposed to get worked up about lately is Terrence Malick’s new The Tree of Life. It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year. And got booed. You’re especially supposed to get worked up, it seems, if you’re into religion. At Killing the…
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Prove (or Disprove) the Existence of God!
Sgt. Dougherty Park (map) Brooklyn, New York Saturday, July 24th, 2010 3pm-5pm The search for proof and disproof of the existence of God through history can tell us as much about the people doing the proving as about any particular deity. What do they mean by God? What counts as proof? In this class at…
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Hipsters, Hasidim, and My Bike Lane
A couple weeks ago I was riding my usual route from home in Clinton Hill to the Williamsburg Bridge when I saw that the ground had shifted beneath my bicycle gears. As I crossed Flushing along Bedford Avenue, into the heart of Hasidic Williamsburg, Brooklyn, my bike lane was gone. Only a faint, sandblasted remnant…
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The Irrelevance of Proof to the Holiday Spirit
I’ve got a zany new essay at Religion Dispatches today about a lecture earlier this week in Brooklyn, “A Philosophical Proof of Santa Claus.” Jamie Hook, the evening’s presenter, did a masterful job of miming some of the issues at play in debates about God—though in the guise of a fellow whose existence, this season…
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Reverend Billy, the “Fake Leader”
Especially when it comes to religion, the line between reality and performance can be very hard to draw. No one reveals this more than Reverend Billy, a New York-based performance artist who uses a televangelist act to preach against the evils of consumerism. In the city election next Tuesday, Billy—using his “real” name, William Talen—will…
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Sackcloth on Wall Street
Religion Dispatches posted a crazy little blog post of mine, “Repentance on Wall Street?” It came to mind after getting the chance to hear yet another rousing talk by Cornel West (along with Judith Butler, Jurgen Habermas, and Charles Taylor) at an SSRC event at Cooper Union. His words and encouragement, such as they are,…
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Sentimental Repression
It has been a welcome relief from the busy romantic adventures of a single fellow in his mid-twenties in New York City, with my cellular phone by happenstance out of commission, to indulge in a reverie of reflection. Its occasion—in addition to the missing phone—was the discovery of Mark Greif’s challenging new essay at n+1…