During Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we cast our sins in to the desert, freeing ourselves from their oppressive burden, unshackling our hearts and minds so that we can begin the year anew. Six months l...Read More
(This is Part 2 of a 3-part series. See Part 1 here.) AUTHORITY There is another hot issue in a discussion about religion and the Bible: the question of who has authority over the tellin...Read More
April 18th, 2013 Today marks Stella Joy Bruner-Methven’s fourth birthday. She died last year, on October 22nd, just days after she turned 3 1/2. Although today is Stella’s birthday, she does not t...Read More
Wm. Curtis Holtzen and Roberto Sirvent have done a great service for those searching for a succinct compilation of theologian-philosopher Keith Ward’s voluminous work. In By Faith and Reason: ...Read More
With almost daily reminders that War is Coming, it gets hard to imagine an alternative. Over the last month our media has been banging the drums of war suggesting that Kim Jong-un is borderline psycho...Read More
After Auschwitz, no theology: From the chimneys of the Vatican, white smoke rises — a sign the cardinals have chosen themselves a Pope. From the crematoria of Auschwitz, black smoke rises —...Read More
In my last post, I showed how Christian supporters and critics of gun control read the Bible with a common assumption: that wherever it speaks about ‘swords,’ it teaches us about weapons i...Read More
Quakers are an interesting bunch in that our religious practice is precisely that: practice. Surrounding this word, minds like de Certeau1 and Jackson2 are summoned. Perhaps no greater, however, comes...Read More
I remember reading Life of Pi by Yann Martel several years ago and how my heart would resonate with each experience of the sacred by the story’s brave protagonist, a Tamil boy from Pondicherry, thr...Read More
Several paradoxes are intrinsic to the democratic project. This essay will confront what Bonnie Honig refers to as the paradox of politics (or, the paradox of democratic legitimation).[1] Honig asks t...Read More