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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…

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…

“Not a Christian Book”: The Perils of the Amazon Book Review

By Charlotte Gordon

…Ishmael, the son of Hagar. To dismiss this double blessing is to dismiss a central principle of the Bible, the law of love, not hate; of peace, not war. To slam the door against other religious traditions is to shut the door in the face of the stranger. Isn’t it our duty to reach out to those we do not know and treat these individuals as we would like to be treated ourselves? I suppose I should be grateful to my critical reviewer. In the past I ha…

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…

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…

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…

Suicide Bombers and the Prozac God: A Review of Dying for Heaven

By Bruce B. Lawrence

…cence, for instance—are also its most dangerous. While it may be easy to decode the thesis from a mere glance at the book’s title and subtitle, it’s not quite so easy to accept the premise. Dying for Heaven, released today, is at once conceptually misguided and systemically flawed; psychologizing religion in general and Islam in particular. Having mined myriad, often disparate sources, and writing from a lofty platform, the author is attempting to…

Jesus Goes to the Dark Carnival: Hell House Gets a Makeover?

By W. Scott Poole

…nd powerful. One of their scripts entitled “Home of the Brave, Land of the Free” tells a story of conversion against the backdrop of the Iraq War. An online preview of the script suggests that the narrative marries jingoism with true piety, portraying the heroes of the script, Corey and Kevin, as “living their dream of defending the country they love,” having gone to Iraq to “love and serve Jesus Christ, the Hero of all mankind.” This obviously s…

The Man of Science vs. The Man of Faith: Richard Dawkins Spars with Stephen Colbert

By Byron R. McCane and Dan Mathewson

…atheism, Richard Dawkins, made an appearance on The Colbert Report, Comedy Central’s spoof of the Fox News-style, uber-conservative, pro-family values political commentary show. The purported reason for Dawkins’ visit was to discuss his newly released tome, The Greatest Show on Earth, a book that claims to reveal “the evidence for evolution,” as declared by the book’s subtitle. But for Stephen Colbert, the show’s faux-conservative bombast of a hos…

New Age Tragedy in Sedona: Non-Indians in the Sweat Lodge

By Johnny P. Flynn

…host Dance, and shares a foundation from Christian eschatology. One of the central myths of the Native American Church is how a twenty-foot-tall Jesus came to Earth and saw the treatment of Indian people and began to cry. Wherever the tears hit the ground peyote grew, and so the buttons of the hallucinogenic plant are called the “tears of Jesus,” and visions generated by eating these tears allow participants to “see what Jesus saw.” Understand, th…