Category: Challenges
The Trouble With Marriage
Many of the benefits that come with marriage make life easier for anyone, not just coupled people. If it's discriminatory to withhold them based on an accident of sexual orientation, it also seems dis... Read More
The Angel of Death and The Things We Need to Live and Die
I spent my summer completing a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education, which is an internship meant to educate and train chaplains. At the closing ceremony for my program, I gave the following brief refl... Read More
Dialogue at the Dead Sea
I believe that the definition of dialogue encompasses the following ideas: Everyone must listen and observe, at the same time as everyone allows themselves to change, growing in understanding and affe... Read More
Donning the Turban: Harleen Kaur’s Response to the Oak Creek Massacre
This interview was originally published on The Daily Beast On August 5, 2012, white supremacist Wade Michael Page wreaked havoc on the Sikh community of Oak Creek, Wisconsin, carrying out the largest ... Read More
Who is a Muslim? Tension at an Interfaith Ramadan Gathering
I helped my Muslim friends break the Ramadan fast at the home of Abdel, an Indian scholar of classical Islam who works at the Great Mosque in Rome to facilitate interfaith dialogue and to ameliorate I... Read More
On Studying Religion to Argue with Religious People
My professional commitment to ecumenical and interfaith relationships stems from a realistic worldview: To not so do would be irresponsible. I tell my students that the world is a big place. Go live i... Read More
“You shall destroy all the peoples”: Does the Bible advocate genocide?
In the parsha for last week, Parashat Eikev, Moses instructs the Israelites on how to enter the land of Israel. The general idea is that if the Israelites observe God’s commandments, they will be re... Read More
Reza Aslan’s Jesus
Reza Aslan has a remarkable ability to make ancient stories come alive. I have assigned his earlier books, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam and Beyond Fundamentalism, in und... Read More