Tag: ritual
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The Tweets of the Christ
I’ve got a new little piece at Religion Dispatches this morning about last Friday’s Twitter passion play hosted by Trinity Church, that ancient place located at the top of Wall Street. “If you look in the scripture,” explains Linda Hanick, Trinity’s V.P. of communications and marketing, “the last words of Jesus are almost written in…
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Twitter Ontology
You know how people nowadays, when traveling especially, need to take a picture of everything just to be sure they’ve experienced it? Maybe they actually look at all those pictures. Or some of them. But isn’t the driving force much more that sneaking feeling at the moment of capture, a dizziness with experience that makes…
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The Pleasure of the Text
Jean-Luc Marion, at the outset of God without Being: One must admit that theology, of all writing, certainly causes the greatest pleasure. During the year of my becoming a Catholic, that frought and crazy and inevitable year, I bought a New Oxford Annotated Bible from my college bookstore. Its over two thousand pages flop between…
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Cooking Up Numbers
Christianity is on the verge of collapse! The atheists are taking over! No, wait, the Wiccans! Nevermind—conservative evangelicals are more robust than ever! Yada ya. If you’re used to following religion news, there’s this occasional ritual that happens when one of the major polls gets released. The newspapers find the most sensational story they can…
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Simple Gifts
The inauguration, blessedly, has happened. A wonderful calm settled during the performance of “Air and Simple Gifts,” a piece composed for the occasion by John Williams, the official composer of the Hollywood blockbuster. The new vice president had been sworn in, and we still awaited the new president. As well as a nod to Aaron…