Category: Social Issues
Averting Your Eyes: The Devastating Consequences of Ignoring Women’s Rights
I was walking down the crowded, cobblestoned streets of Jerusalem’s Old City when a bearded man with narrow eyes reached out his hand and tried to grab my breast. I did not know him. I had not... Read More
Early Christian/Non-Christian Encounters as Comparative Theological Resources: A Case in Sixteenth-Century Japan
Recent research on cross-cultural encounters in the early modern period has shown that the records of the first Europeans in eastern Asia provide us with excellent models to reflect on current issues ... Read More
Class Consciousness: The Spiritual Cost of Unemployment
I tend to think of Buddhist practice as a way of cultivating a mind so stable that such storms leave it unscathed, and I often judge myself harshly when I fail to live up to that standard—when the s... Read More
Not Theology, but Authority: Rob Bell and the Evangelical Institutional Establishment
The criticism of Rob Bell’s Love Wins is not about theology. It is all about authority. In case you missed the hubbub surrounding Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins, I point you to Sara StaelyR... Read More
Peter King Hearings: A Crystallizing Moment for the Interfaith Movement?
The hearings Representative Peter King recently held on the supposed “radicalization” of American Muslims are widely considered to be the most counterproductive in recent history. They sin... Read More
Sustaining the Earth, Sustaining People
It was an exciting weekend for me as an aspiring rabbi not only because I got to connect with friends and colleagues from across the Jewish environmental world, but because I felt in this diverse comm... Read More
Fill in the Middle Ground: Intertextuality and Inter-Religious Dialogue in 16th-Century Guatemala
There are, in fact, very few times in human history when two or more sizably significant groups of people encounter each other and neither one has any actual idea who, or even what, the other group is... Read More
Making Sense of “God’s Love”
Summer 2010. I am in Indonesia. None of my doctors are on the same page, but they all agree that something is wrong. One Saturday my shoulder freezes at the joint and I can’t lift it more than four ... Read More