Tag: politics
-
Religion for Radicals
Today at The Immanent Frame, I talk with literary critic Terry Eagleton about his new book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. Arguments about God and religion, he insists, are more than just tiffs about lofty ideas; they are deeply political and should be understood as such. Dawkins and I were recently…
-
Erik Prince and the Spell of Freedom
Fueled by Jeremy Scahill’s recent revelations about Blackwater and its founder Erik Prince in The Nation, I’ve got a new essay at Religion Dispatches exploring the concept of freedom in relationship to the business of free-market warfare. Erik Prince discovered a passion for freedom long before founding Blackwater. Freedom is a mighty thing. Its exercise…
-
Religion Takes the Stand
Today at The Immanent Frame, I discuss with Winnifred Fallers Sullivan her challenging theses about the failures of American law to account for lived religion and, most urgently, her recent book on the role of religious organizations in prison reform. In Prison Religion, you reveal how the American, secular prison system has largely given up…
-
Events Today in Costa Rica
My present travels in Costa Rica with the photographer Lucas Foglia, through a sequence of chance connections and exaggerated truths, landed us the opportunity to be in the press section at today’s meeting between (Nobel laureate) President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica and the two contenders for the presidency of neighboring Honduras. We understand our…
-
The End of Evangelical-Bashing?
So what if I didn’t finish my first book before graduating from college? Today at Religion Dispatches I have an essay about someone who did—Kevin Roose, author of The Unlikely Disciple, an account of his semester “abroad” from Brown at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. Like me, Roose was happy at Brown. We each ventured into…
-
Waging Nonviolence
You might not believe it, but I’m now involved with yet another website. I never seem to be able to say no to a good thing. So if checking The Row Boat and Killing the Buddha all the time isn’t enough for you, here’s one more: wagingnonviolence.org. When I first arrived in New York, I…
-
The Defense Department Gospel
Donald Rumsfeld took the Lord’s name in vain. Today at Religion Dispatches, I discuss the documents released by GQ this weekend, cover sheets for 2003 intelligence briefings that Rumsfeld delivered to President Bush. On them, Biblical passages sit suggestively alongside scenes of desert warfare. With only the most cursory bit of investigation, I was able…
-
The Original Peaceniks
My review of Joseph Kip Kosek’s Acts of Conscience appears in this week’s Commonweal. The online version is subscription-only, but the magazine is well worth picking up at your local newsstand. In his new history of Christian nonviolence from World War I to Vietnam, Joseph Kip Kosek asks what this movement has offered American democracy,…
-
Star Trek Sans Politics
I’ve got a new essay on Religion Dispatches that I did up in a sleepless tizzy after seeing the new Star Trek movie. I had a great time going with my old Star Trek convention buddy Mat to the Lincoln Center IMAX on opening week. Nothing can quite compete with the thrill of seeing those…
-
Showboating for the Prez
This is where I was week before last: With a black hood covering my head, all I could see outside was blurry and dark. The outside couldn’t see in. After an hour of standing still, my muscles began to ache terribly. The cardboard sign I carried felt like a slab of concrete. Sounds blended and…