To the One-Percenters, With Love
Yes, your colleagues would laugh if you went out to protest. Marie Antoinette laughed too, until she found herself smiling up from the bottom of a wicker basket.
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In Praise of Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene has been the object of endless projection, one fantasy after another luridly tattooed on the screen of her flesh. That some of these projections are in fact feminist projections only confirms her status as a saint for our times. Mary of Magdala is Mary of Irony, too.
Does Hitchens Have a Prayer?
When I was told that Christopher Hitchens has been diagnosed with cancer and that this has sparked a discussion about whether people ought to pray for him, my first reaction was a stupefying bewilderment. I can’t say that I’ve entirely recovered.
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Goy to the World: What Does Hanukkah Have to Teach Us About Living in Empire?
A goyish writer wrestles with the anti-imperial themes of Hanukkah and the discomfiting questions it raises for citizens of the American empire. Might an empire be a force for good? Is “force for good” an oxymoron? And finally: how does a Roman manage, in practical terms, to say no to Rome?
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So Deep a Wound: Home, and the novels of Marilynne Robinson
Pulitzer Prize-winner Marilynne Robinson’s third novel in as many decades is packed with the author’s signature themes of struggle, torment, grace, mystery and vulnerability-in other words: Christianity. Indeed, only a Christian of uncommon mettle could write a novel so untainted by the bastardized tropes of Christian culture.
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Op-Ed: A Few Things I Wish Barack Obama Had Said
I deeply regret that some people took, or claimed to take, my use of this metaphor as a reference to Sarah Palin. Let me say categorically that I do not see Governor Palin as a pig…
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A New Thing: On the Quest for a Biblical Politics
While both progressives and conservatives seek confirmation of their politics in the bible, how does one derive a political outlook from a text with few parallels to the political context in which we live? In other words, how do you ask “What would Jesus do?” when the one thing Jesus couldn’t do was vote?
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