Category: Philosophy
Romantic Distance vs. Vexing Proximity: the difficulty of real up-close interfaith encounters
My research on interreligious dialogue and engagement has reinforced an old cliché: absence makes the heart grow fonder. When two people are distant from each other, it is easy to idealize each other... Read More
On Irreconcilable Differences: My Interreligious Dialogue with Mormon Missionaries
Since I’m conducting field research on interfaith dialogue in Rome, I thought it would be an important part of my participant-observation to embark upon a dialogue. I met some Mormon sisters conduct... Read More
The Power of Contentment
There is a force so strong it threatens to destroy our nation, society, and the Earth itself. Many of the major religions have warned us against this force and offered advice on how to avoid this pitf... Read More
What Can Interfaith Dialogue Really Do? Part 3 of 3
Read Part I here, and Part II here. When I ate lunch with the rabbi he inveighed against interfaith dialogue and its inability to reach or transform the minds of those who are closed to dialogue. He s... Read More
What Can Interfaith Dialogue Really Do? Part 1 of 3
After the most recent Purim morning service at my synagogue, I ate lunch with the rabbi. He told me he thinks interreligious dialogue is an in-group hobby, that interfaith groups become cliques. He fe... Read More
How Do We Tolerate the Intolerant?
What do tolerant people do with the intolerant? We tolerate them. We ignore them. We insult them. We try to change them: By explaining. By demonstrating. By oppressin... Read More
Technology and the Creation of the Docile Physician
Discipline is no longer simply an art of distributing bodies, of extracting time from them and accumulating it, but of composing forces in order to obtain an efficient machine. – Foucault, Disci... Read More
Ethics in the Shadow of Gethsemane
Every year at Harvard Divinity School, there is an annual competition for 2nd and 3rd year MDiv students called the Billings Preaching Competition. Being raised Catholic, preaching was never really a ... Read More