Why The Advocate‘s Choice of Pope Francis for Person of the Year is a Mistake
…Pope Francis as much as anyone, I need concrete actions to back up the sentiments. Until the dogma changes, talk is cheap….
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Holding Out for a Hero: New ID Book Aims to Save You From Despair of Evolution
…nremarkable button marked “God made proteins.” But salvation is not such a cheap, glib thing. Those who are serious about salvation are serious about creating the conditions of genuine ease and assurance for others in the face of their deepest terrors and despairs. What this requires is much more difficult, interesting, and rewarding than trying to win the same tired arguments about the structure of molecules. What is needed, for theists and athei…
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‘We’re all in this together’: The Perils of Kumbaya Rhetoric
Talk is cheap, and sentimental talk cheapens public discourse in dangerous ways at a time when total sobriety is required. Eight weeks into a public health and economic catastrophe, the facts before us should be sobering enough: Disease and death in this pandemic overwhelmingly afflict communities of color (e.g. despite making up just a third of the state’s population, 70% of the dead in Louisiana have been African American; in Michigan the numbe…
Read MoreWhy Egypt is America’s Enemy
…llow Arabs, demonized and derided for years, such that their blood becomes cheap. This happens all too often with minorities; what is unique about the Arab world is the degree to which many dictatorships also oppress the majority. My point in that essay about Tunisia was that we in America and the West generally reflexively associate secularism with what is good and democratic, and conservatism (specifically, in Islam) with that which is antidemo…
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Possible Heir to Dalai Lama Cleared of Corruption Charges
…ny analyst and former official with a view on Tibet and China could fire a cheap shot. The Indian government’s assertiveness vis-à-vis China is refreshing (though achieving it at the expense of refugees and Buddhist monks who fled China at 14 to get an education smacks of bad taste.) The affair has also unsettled the sentiments of those living in India’s predominantly Buddhist Himalayan region, which separates China from India. There were large pr…
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“The Gift of Gay”: Father Matthew Kelty, Confessor to Thomas Merton, Dies at 96
…watchword at Gethsemani; and even a cursory walk through the Abbey’s gift shop today demonstrates how many of the monks have taken up Merton’s call to creativity in the written and visual arts. Father Matthew Kelty was no exception, though he came to his creativity slower than most. Like Merton, he left Gethsemani for a time; unlike Merton, he always intended to return. He spent three years (1970-1973) with a small Cistercian community in Oxford,…
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Obamunism? The Traditional Values Coalition Coins a Term
…hey believe lies in store during the Obama administration, nevertheless, a number of groups took part in activities marking the anniversary, and others are planning a series of actions and longer-lasting campaigns. The Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person hosted a forum of original commentary from a group of pro-life scholars and public policy experts who addressed the question of whether the pro-life movement has “failed.” (All c…
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Stonewall, 40 Years Later, What Has Been Achieved?
…ocial progress. But in addition to the tourists taking pictures of various shop windows and their common refrain—“Be Proud”—there were the predictable offhand street-smart remarks and muttering from out-of-town visitors, reading the signs and placards aloud in effected voices dripping with irony, or ill-disguised contempt. What had it all meant? What had been achieved? The short answer is “tolerance,” I suppose, the gradual acknowledgment that a p…
Read MoreThe Emotional Problem in American Evangelicalism
…When religiosity means middle class comfort and a megachurch with a coffee shop, faith really is just another adornment. But perhaps most importantly, Millennials are unlikely to subscribe to a culture war Christianity that—in addition to being too emotional—has also been too ugly. Its political strategy has been noxious for about four decades. A problem it’d probably take more than doctrinal heft to fix. Millennials are leaving the church in la…
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‘Exporting Garbage to the Nations’: Conservative Christian Rifts Spreading Like Cracked Glass
…neo-charismatics generally, and prophet Julie Green—who had appeared at a number of Doug Mastriano campaign and ReAwaken America events—in particular. Hume took specific exception to Green’s prophecies at a Mastriano event in Spooky Nook, where she casually equated Trump with Jesus. “God said ‘You can’t stop my son. Who is the rightful president. He is on his way back,” she prophesied, “and how he takes his position back on center stage, you will…
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