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Devil’s Bookmark: Doubting God’s Existence, but Angry Nevertheless

By Bernard Schweizer

…ship between writers and their fictional creations? Biographical Fallacy? Rubbish. First rule of literary criticism: Don’t identify fictional characters with their authors. Amendment: the first rule is suspended till further notice. To let an author’s life illuminate her work and vice versa is sometimes branded as a “biographical fallacy.” The term implies that biographical information tarnishes the noble autonomy of the literary artifact and sho…

The Garden of Eden: A Dull Place? Paradise Lust Author Explains…

By Nathan Schneider

…a beautiful, perfect place? Not exactly. Some say the (possibly Sumerian) word “Edin” means simply “a flat plain.” The Mesopotamian ancestors of the Bible stories have this polytheistic, pragmatic quality which I for one really enjoy. The legendary Sumerian “happy hunting grounds” called Dilmun is a nice place, sure, but also noted to be useful as a convenient location for trading. In their flood story which precedes Noah’s Ark, the gods (note th…

God Versus Mega-Aliens

By Paul Wallace

…best, stories are not just about amusement. The best ones may actually be true somehow. Is Naff’s truncated religious story true in the way he suggests—literally, scientifically? Maybe so, maybe not. Is it true in the way he wants it not to be—poetically, metaphorically? Maybe so, maybe not. As a Christian, I think so. But Zvan differs: “We are better off treating [non-scientific] stories as fantasies until they are supported by observation.” OK,…

Taking (Public School) Teachers to Church, and the Mosque, and the Temple…

By Lisa Webster

…ects like science (think Galileo, Darwin), art and music (Bach, da Vinci), world history (Crusades, Protestant Reformation) and American history (Revolution, Civil Rights Movement). And a subject you really can’t teach without including religion is social studies, which incorporates politics, sociology, economics and psychology. What kinds of objections do people raise when they realize that you’re talking about public schools here? Many people re…

“Cult” Cinema Comes of Age

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…he Master” himself is Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who uncovers stories from the individual’s past, via hypnotic suggestion, and turns these personal stories into sacred ones. Psychotherapy mixes with self-seeking, and a cosmological structure is set in place pointing toward a more pure, perfect, and pleasant tomorrow. No longer do mythologies remain in the distant past, disconnected from our life worlds; now we find our very selves (so…

On Death and After-Death

By Amina Wadud

…we humans have had the tendency to be the most deceitful—and that is with words in the first place. In fact, there is an interesting thing about words and about gender regarding these post-life states. As I said, it is either male and female, or there is no specification. Then, we get statements like this: “Whoever do good deeds, whether male or female, and (he) is a believer, all such shall be rewarded.” This is where I find the Qur’an is up aga…

The Bible, Brought To You By Wal-Mart

By Paul Harvey

…to Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ painting being reproduced to allow post-World War II Americans to be “card-carrying Christians,” to countless evangelical products that pervade the world of popular culture. 3. Aside from the inevitable projections for success and commercial tie-ins designed to spin off attention to and profits for the series, the series producers share one other characteristic very common to the genre of producing films of bibli…

The Brutality of the American Eden

By Paul Harvey

…hose defined outside the ranks of the free and the citizen. This remained true during the era when America’s God was a republican and providentialist one. American religious history fundamentally has been about this dialectic of religious freedom in the dominant nation–state, the racialization of peoples, and the resulting struggle to forge spaces of freedom and autonomy, often through the creation or preservation of religious customs and institut…

Christianity v. Christ: An Excerpt From A People’s History of Christianity

By Diana Butler Bass

…suffering, and commitment as people “go and do likewise.” Friends swapping stories. The second, and maybe more surprising, claim is that after decades of struggle, moderate and liberal Christianity is experiencing an unexpected renewal in North America. Many people now refer to this energized cluster as “progressive” or “emerging” Christianity. I have come to think of it as beyond existing categories of conservative-moderate-liberal. Instead, I re…

A Memoir of Jewish, Transgender Spirituality

By Joy Ladin

…uldn’t choose to present themselves. Memoir writers get the first and last word, and all the words in between; that is inherently unfair to those who appear in our stories. When, as in my memoir, those stories include acrimonious divorce and family break-up, the ethical stakes are even higher. I didn’t solve those ethical problems in my memoir — I don’t think they can be solved — but I tried to be as conscious of them as I could, and I asked thos…