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An Untold Tale: American Fiction vs. The Religious Right

By Christopher Douglas

…rl Sagan, and Dan Brown’s popular religious mystery thriller, The Da Vinci Code. Sagan has a reputation as a proto-New Atheist, but his novel suggests he was intensely sympathetic to religious experience and authority. By the end of his novel he has his scientist protagonist embark on a career of “experimental theology” after she has discovers the “signature” of God in the very structure of the universe. At the same time, Sagan was not impressed b…

Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired

By Rachel Wagner

…des, but exploded in 2003 with the publication of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code which, more than anything, showcases Brown’s muddled if provocative incorporation of the Gnostic worldview into the novel. Fans of The Da Vinci Code don’t need to go out and purchase Robinson’s translation, they can simply read the Gnostic texts online at the Gnosis Archive. Or, if they’re interested in other early contenders for New Testament inclusion—the Gospel of P…

Could Orthodoxy Be Having its Vatican II Moment?

By Chrissy Stroop

…lobe not usually associated with Orthodox Christianity, from Asia, Africa, Western Europe, and from North America. In and of itself, such a universal gathering represents a singular and significant event in the life of the Church demonstrating the new global reach of Orthodox Christianity. The council should focus the attention of the Churches away from solely parochial and local concerns to a broader perspective on Church life. Nonetheless, there…

Tweeting ISIS Attacks: A Lesson in Not Learning a Lesson

By Haroon Moghul

…had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, and were invaded too. Some ten years ago, Western forces ranged the length and breadth of a Middle Eastern country, and today forces coordinated from the territory of that country have launched attacks on Western territories. It’s very easy to turn this war into an endless seesaw, in which countless innocents become casualties. The only way forward is if our president pursues vigorously a policy of bringing world p…

Challenge to ‘un-Africanness’ of homosexuality; LGBT Catholics in Africa face church cooperation with persecution; lesbian cartoon project debuts in bangladesh under shadow of violence; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…angelists, since the 1980s. While Africans argued that homosexuality was a western import, they in turn used a western religion as the basis for their argument. When I have challenged people who are anti-gay, many have said that it is not our culture. However, when you probe further, they argue that homosexuality is not in the Bible. But the Bible is not our historical culture. This shows there is real confusion about Africa’s past. Reinforcing th…

RDBook: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World: An Interview with Michelle Goldberg

By Mandy Van Deven

…rden”? Sure, but what can you do? Writing about these issues at all from a Western perspective is obviously fraught in all kinds of ways. At the same time, they’re fascinating in part because there are so many taboos and political baggage surrounding them. I can’t really imagine not wading into a subject I find interesting because it’s somehow un-PC. Besides, the West, particularly the United States, is already deeply involved in shaping policies…

The Martyrdom of Cecil the Lion

By Jacob J. Erickson

…amously, Teddy Roosevelt headed to East Africa in the name of science (and Western Masculinity, I would add) to bag the Big Five for himself. The term morphed into use for the tourist industry, safari-goers paying big bucks for guides to track down the five. Such activities, for sport, usually served to demonstrate the God-given “dominion” of human beings over the “chaotic” and “morally dubious” wilderness of the natural world, women, other cultur…

The White Nationalist Fantasy of Ancient Christian-Muslim Conflict Would Get an ‘F’ in History Class

By Tony Keddie

…ristian aristocrats. The Battle of Tours was neither an epic clash between Western and Eastern civilizations, as the influential eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon spun it, nor was it a battle between the Christian West and Eastern invaders, as French nationalists and white nationalists like Steve Bannon have argued. James Palmer, a medieval historian, has noted that Martel was no defender of Christendom, and his ecclesiastical peers denou…

Why ISIS War Would Make Paris Attacks a Success

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…litary action against them, this would fit perfectly into the image of the Western Crusaders waging war against the forces of Islam. No matter that the Islamic forces of ISIS are terrorists and despised by most Muslims around the world; to their supporters and potential volunteers, they are able to project an image of Muslim resiliency if Western forces do in fact become more militarily engaged in Syria and Iraq. Most acts of terrorism are perform…

Irony of the Iranian Women’s Burqa Ban

By Shabana Mir

…ar Sania Mirza’s short skirts. Then I do a double-take, and ask the global-Western, anti-hijabists to recall their political-cultural identities. Weren’t we Westerners supposed to be privatized individuals? Weren’t we supposed to live and let live? Don’t we laugh up our sleeves at authoritarian states and cultures that arrange marriages, control women’s clothes and sex lives, and generally run other people’s lives? Aren’t we the cool heads who blo…