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The Best Books Media of 2008

By Jeff Sharlet

…much of American culture even as it was consumed by it, one needs to talk about the whole world. * * * A former Christian Science Monitor political reporter, Ariel Sabar, author of My Father’s Paradise, grew up with a different dying language. His father is among the last living native speakers of Aramaic, which until the middle years of the 20th century survived as the language of Kurdish Jews in Iraq. Setting off to his father’s homeland at the…

God Versus Mega-Aliens

By Paul Wallace

…n origins. Both players get it right, and both get it wrong. First to bat, science writer Clay Farris Naff stakes out new territory in the science-religion rumpus ring: supernatural-free intentional creation. Naff, a secular humanist, proposes a scenario in which our universe was created by a mega-species with the intention of perpetuating life. This mega-species was (is?) trapped in its own universe which, like our own, is subject to the inexorab…

Updated: 5 Lessons Learned from the Apocalypse Fail, Or, It’s Not the End of the World as We Know It, and I Feel So-So

By Gary Laderman

…destruction in 2012. 3. Americans are fixated on world destruction. Forget about what the religions of the world say about the end, just look at the incredible bounty of apocalyptic images and storylines in popular culture to see a widespread societal obsession with the end of the world. Think of End of Days or Armageddon; more recently there’s been 2012 and Battle: Los Angeles. The list goes on and on: Independence Day, The Day the Earth Stood St…

RDBook: Whither the Religious Left?

By Bill Berkowitz

…s on fresh approaches to hot button issues; and the third, a set of essays about how to begin to think about doing politics differently and more effectively.“ The book, while “not intended as a manifesto, a platform or blueprint,“ said Clarkson, is more like the “application of jumper cables to start a necessary conversation.“ Contributors include former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges; Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans Uni…

Top Five (Less Sensational, But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson (1930-2023)

By Mark Hulsether

…tson’s latest provocation. It bores me, and I feel cheapened even to think about it as I worry about one of my students who has not yet returned from a mission trip to Haiti. Still I could not resist clicking on a list of Robertson’s top ten greatest gaffes that I found in the blogosphere. It was amusing to ponder the rankings. Does Robertson’s feat of leg-pressing 2000 pounds (thanks to the diet shakes he was selling) deserve first place? Does hi…

Beyond Radical: Mary Daly, Feminist Theologian, Changed Worlds

By Susan Henking

…ted generations of women. For Daly, women, (W)omen—that’s what she was all about. And, even more radically, she was about women loving women, lesbians with a capital L, meaning not those of a certain sexual orientation embedded within patriarchy, but those who truly loved themSelves. For Daly, as she eventually came to see it, debates between Jungianism and Freudianism, between Marxism and Nazism, Christianity and Judaism or Buddhism, were all wha…

Why are Nuns and Monks in the Streets? (Parts I & II)

By José Cabezón

…lation. In those monasteries that do still exist, serious study of Tibetan Buddhism is no longer allowed; in fact, even admission to these centres of learning is being strictly regulated. In reality, there is no religious freedom in Tibet.” It may seem strange to an outsider that the regulation of monastic institutions—for example, the control of the number of monks in monasteries—should be such an important issue for Tibetans. Let me try and expl…

Telling the World a ‘Big Story’: RD in Conversation with Karen Armstrong

By Laurie Patton

…ow about the very early days of Christianity; they want to learn something about what we can know about the historical Jesus and what we can’t, and what words he said and what words he didn’t say. And this kind of knowledge about religions can be abused. People will quote scripture out of context, and having that knowledge of what the scripture is really about helps them. And so for these reasons it is really important to have that scholarly voice…

Google-Phonics, Or, ‘What Is the Sound of a Thousand Tech Workers Meditating?’

By Kevin Healey

…ve peace of complacency. Now he was. As in any tradition, there is not one Buddhism—there are multiple Buddhisms competing for our attention or, if you like, multiple perspectives about what constitutes authentic Buddhist teaching. These tensions were palpable as discussion ensued after the presentation that Sunday morning. Another high-profile attendee asked for clarification about the concept of civic mindfulness, which had also come up during t…

[This Valentine’s Day] Less Sex is Good Sex!

By Kate Blanchard

…ween (married) partners, but a sense of moderation has generally remained. Buddhism, meanwhile, teaches that suffering comes from inordinate desire. For a time this seemed—as in Christianity—to imply that the ideal Buddhist must be erotically ascetic. While Buddhism, too, developed its understanding to include the possibility of good sex, it nevertheless calls into question the central importance of body worship, passionate entanglements, and sens…