Category: Social Issues
Same-Sex Marriage and Slippery Slopes
In his dissent to the Supreme Court's landmark ruling on same-sex marriage, Chief Justice John Roberts offers a familiar 'slippery slope' argument. Slippery slope arguments offer a very narrow picture... Read More
Choice and Safety: Required Ingredients for Interfaith Progress
Classic “contact theory” predicts that diverse societies automatically bring about tolerance. I argued against this idea here when I discussed how proximity generally exacerbates the anxiety of di... Read More
Searching for the Buddha’s Climate Change Policy
On May 14, I joined some 130 Buddhist leaders, teachers and scholars representing over 60 major Buddhist schools and ethnicities in Washington D.C. for the first White House U.S. Buddhist Leaders Conf... Read More
What Is the Unity of “Unity in Diversity”?
Notwithstanding the prizing of diversity, there IS some unified bottom line to interfaith dialogue. Nonviolent behavior is the basis for “unity in diversity.” Behavior is a category about which a... Read More
If You’re Sad About Charleston, Do Something
Recently someone asked me: “What would your community look like if it loved black people?” A few answers came to me, but the first and last answer was, “I don’t know and I want... Read More
Laudato Si’ – Becoming Painfully Aware
This is the first in a multi-part series exploring the Laudato Si’ Encyclical Letter on the environment by Pope Francis. “Our goal is not to amass information or to satisfy curiosity, but rath... Read More
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
Charleston: #BlackLivesMatter This Ramadan
I logged onto Facebook Tuesday night, about to post a “Ramadan Mubarak!” wish for all my Muslim friends. And then, scrolling down my news feed, I saw it—the news that a white man had entered a b... Read More