Tag: Violence
Did Religious Extremism Kill Vittorio Arrigoni?
Last week, human rights activist Vittorio Arrigoni was murdered in Gaza. Found strangled in an abandoned home, Vittorio was an outspoken humanitarian and peacemaker since arriving in Gaza in 2009 on ... Read More
Psalm 137 and Religious Violence, Part V: Milton’s Allusive Abuse
For Part I of this series, click here; for Part II, click here; for Part III, click here; for Part IV, click here. If Stephen Marshall’s literalism makes his reading of Psalm 137 easy to interpret a... Read More
Psalm 137 and Religious Violence, Part IV: No Neuters
As the cases of Digby and Smectymnuus illustrate, the Israel/Edom metaphor does not readily admit of middle ground. Indeed, in a famous sermon given on the occasion of a Parliamentary fast day on 23 F... Read More
Psalm 137 and Religious Violence, Part III: Bishop Hall and the Smectymnuan Hydra
The invocations of Psalm 137 got uglier when Hall addressed a new tract to Parliament in the wake of the Root and Branch Petition. This tract drew responses from adversaries in his first category, the... Read More
Psalm 137 and Religious Violence, Part II: Root and Branch
Like Jacob and Esau after the episode of the pottage, the family relationship of the English Church had gone quite sour by 1640, and this bitterness gave Psalm 137 its potency in the church-government... Read More
Afghans Attack U.N. Building, Murder Workers and Each Other After Qur’an Burning
Remember Terry Jones? Not the guy from Monty Python, but the Florida pastor who threatened to burn copies of the Qur’an last August in response to the building of the Cordoba House Islamic cultu... Read More
Psalm 137 and Religious Violence, Part I: “Down with it, down with it, even to the ground”
7 Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, in the day of Jerusalem: how they said, Down with it, down with it, even to the ground. 8 O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery: yea, happy shall he be tha... Read More
The Curious Case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The former Muslim atheist who "prefer(s) John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Jon Stewart to Jesus Christ," commends...Jesus Christ?... Read More