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The Gospel of Contradiction: An Interview with Mary Gordon

By Nathan Schneider

…erfection. But I don’t think it works very well in the world. Finally, the central question of everything has to be its relationship to human suffering. Does the ascetic contribute to the alleviation of suffering, or does it contribute to more suffering? When I look at people in my own life who have alleviated my suffering or who have caused my suffering, it tends to be the Prodigal Son-types who have alleviated it. My great spiritual ideal is Joh…

Beyond Radical: Mary Daly, Feminist Theologian, Changed Worlds

By Susan Henking

…ncing (and becoming) themSelves. Denied tenure (eventually overturned) and promotion to full professor, and forced into retirement, the longtime Boston College professor’s career spanned world transformations of Roman Catholicism, higher education, and American culture’s treatment of women. Beginning with her degrees from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, where she was the first woman to receive a theological degree, through her witnessin…

Haiti and the Push for Theological Questions

By Paula M. Cooey

…eated, given that God is, after all, both benevolent and all powerful. The central figure Candide, a naïf of the first order, challenges theodicy with the ironclad logic of a child as he proceeds through an adolescent life riddled by personal disaster. Given human suffering (particularly from natural disaster, and particularly the suffering of those who are not on the face of it evil), how can this possibly be the best of all worlds? And if this i…

Mauled by an Angel: Why Do Americans Need “God’s Secret Agents”?

By W. Scott Poole

…Christian experience (which, I argue in Satan in America, actually forms a central theme in the American religious experience). Angels, portrayed as warriors fighting beside evangelical Christians, became a hugely popular representation of spiritual life. Billy Graham’s 1975 Angels: God’s Secret Agents increased this fascination with angels, demons, and the possibility of spiritual warfare. Graham insisted that what he viewed as an increased inter…

Capricology: Week 2: The Soul of a Robot

By Salman Hameed

…g exploration of media and the effects of mediation. I don’t just mean the central representations of artificial consciousness and virtual worlds, but also more mundane forms of media practices which show how information gets recorded and transmitted. This week, for example, we have some throwaway lines about Uncle Sam Adama’s tattoos, which we are told signal to others in his community who he is and what he has done. His “tats” are a kind of info…

This Just In: College Will Make You an Atheist

By Susan Henking

…ple, the notion that college is good for faith (see here) or points to the central importance of the religious engagement of American undergraduates (see a study funded in part by Teagle). Such efforts to examine the relation of particular disciplines to religiosity also link, perhaps, to various studies of faculty and faith which examine both correlations and possible causal relations (see here or here). Religious Leaders of the Future? Why do we…

Capricology: Week 3: Apotheosis, Anyone?

By Salman Hameed

…______ Sunday, February 7. Fellow Capricologists: What did you make of the centrality of the news to “Reins of the Waterfall,” this week’s episode? On an earlier post, I’d joked about Ron Moore’s nod to newspapers with the debut of The Caprican on the SyFy Web page. But this week’s clips from Cap2 News, the Caprica Tribune, Cubits and Pieces, and Backtalk with Baxter Sarno provided another glimpse at the porous boundary between perception and real…

The Pope and Social Media: A Digital Counter-Reformation?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…he dominant modes of interpersonal expression and communication as well as central mechanisms in the construction of personal identity, social identity, and community. One Step Forward, Three or Four Centuries Back Yet, Web 2.0 and all that his effort attempts to be, I can’t help noticing how much the Pope’s World Communication Day message echoes themes of the 16th and 17th century Counter Reformation. Largely a response to the provocations of the…

Catholic Charities Cuts Off Health Insurance To Employees’ Spouses in DC

By Sarah Posner

…ding on Capitol Hill. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the central player in pressuring the Democratic leadership to include the Stupak amendment in the House health care bill last fall, is frequently portrayed as less insidious than other religious right groups that also supported Stupak, because the USCCB supports health care reform, and those other groups just wanted to kill it altogether. The bishops call for “a truly universal…

Islam, Meet Maureen Dowd

By Haroon Moghul

…approximate the Vatican, or the Dalai Lama: Neither hosts nor represents a central Islamic authority.) But there’s more than just a poor series of contrasts, betraying an inability to grasp the fundamental structure of a faith and culture. And that is the idea that because one religion does something one way, other religions should be judged by the same measure; this gumption hints at the kind of flatness which can—as we see in some places in the…