Religion Dispatches
…a cemetery all over again. And tomorrow that same Pyramid will become the central symbol and staging area for an ancient-style Roman triumph celebrating a very modern kind of gay pride. And one day after that, some thousands of miles away, citizens in the United States celebrated something else with parades: their independence, their freedom from undue oppression and interference in their personal affairs. It can be overwhelming, this palimpsesti…
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…harged political backdrop in “secular” France, where religion is playing a central role in the political theater. Coming on the heels of the recent banning of burqas in public, the assault on the photo has been characterized as a response to Nicolas Sarkozy’s public elevation of the “Christian heritage of France,” which some see as his pandering to the Christian far-right. Gallery director Eric Mézil claims that the protests at the exhibition reve…
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…e Bible on his desk. Because he had refused to remove it, citing religious freedom under the First Amendment, he said he was being persecuted. Students organized a rally for him, bringing their Bibles to school in support. A Web site devoted to Freshwater’s cause is called www.bibleonthedesk.com. But Dennis said the issue was never about the Bible on the desk. And nowhere in the lawsuit’s initial complaint is it even mentioned. Rather, she says, i…
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…nd inexorable globalization experiment, there is that most challenging and central question for all educators and learners: how do we most effectively teach and learn across cultural and intellectual gaps? In its own small way, our project is a model and provides a laboratory for addressing these big questions. The components are there for a good experiment: a religious leader and a religion, Tibetan Buddhism, unusually open to discussion and inte…
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…ters spent five years sniffing out evidence that the cruciform symbol, the central image of Christianity, arrived very late on the scene. Indeed, it was not important during the first millennium of Christian history. For evidence they went to the art. The search took them to Rome, Ravenna, and Turkey; then to Germany. “It took Jesus a long time to die,” Brock says. Not until 965 in northern Germany was the life-sized oak crucifix called the Gero C…
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…collected. Helvetica, whether we are conscious of it or not, has become a central visual reference in modern Western culture. Two tabs. One sacred and one profane? The Internet as a mode of erasing such differences? But the truth is more complex. What I am after here is not a discourse on the reduction of all messages, great and small, to the medium of the Web page, interesting as that might be; but rather the constant interrelation of the medium…
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…reader of my book will see. Adams, in her book, makes the problem of evil central to Christian theology, and represents the incarnation and crucifixion as God’s solution to the problem. It’s written in an academic style and sometimes gets a bit heavy with the technical language of theology and philosophy of religion, but for anyone interested in really engaging with the problem of evil from within the context of Christian theology, this book is i…
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…ble finding doctors who will write them a prescription for lethal drugs. A central Washington man diagnosed with pancreatic cancer asked his doctors for the drugs, but not one would approve his request. Stephen Wallace died on April 8, after what his family said was a painful struggle that could have been avoided had doctors respected his wishes. “Patients need professional medical support for their choice, not abandonment at their moment of need,…
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…as part of its “spiritual mapping” project. It is currently operational in Central America, Uganda and the Middle East. Otis’ history in Middle East dates back more than two decades to when his father George Otis Sr., a close friend of Ronald Reagan and former Lear Jet executive, set up the High Adventure radio ministry in Lebanon in 1980. Otis put the station in the hands of Christian Falangists during the Israeli occupation. The US State Departm…
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…M. Hutchens of the Christian Zionist “Jerusalem Connection,” who has been promoting the piece. Why? Bartholomew: “I can see why Freund would enthuse over this, but it’s less clear why a conservative evangelical like Hutchens would want to promote the idea of 500,000 to 1 million Portuguese and Spaniards embracing a religion other than Christianity. Such are the mysteries of Christian Zionism.” Coral Ridge Ministries Produces Is Jesus God?: Since…
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