Religion Dispatches
…modern age. That is the suggestive idea explored in Marcia Brennan’s new book, Curating Consciousness. Brennan introduces us to James Johnson Sweeney (1900-1968), a provocative art critic, curator, and unapologetic modernist who devoted most of his professional life to the promotion of “the museum as a secular temple of art.” While the spiritual orientation of a great deal of modern Abstraction is widely recognized and widely appreciated, it was…
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…es mostly about why faith is stupid (and quite a bit about cats). His new book, Faith Vs. Fact, is a 250-page critique of religion couched in a more modest epistemological argument. “Science and religion,” he writes, “are competitors in the business of finding out what is true about our universe. In this goal religion has failed miserably, for its tools for discerning ‘truth’ are useless.” Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatib…
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…ethic of care exemplified in Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism. The cooperation between religious communities and government—so vividly on display in the fall of 1979—has broken down. Refugee resettlement has emerged as a starkly partisan issue, and government leaders at all levels have forcefully opposed resettling Syrian refugees. *** Thanksgivukkah, with a Side of Christmas Envy Part of the creative ferment of Thanksgiving, as an invented…
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On a teleconference last month with a loose coalition of white and Latino evangelical leaders, Sen. Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat who had recently unveiled a legislative proposal for comprehensive immigration reform, pleaded with participants to bring Republican senators to the table to hammer out a bipartisan package. “You can play a vital role,” said Schumer. “You have great links to many of our Republican senators, they have great res…
Read More…e Committee on Pro-Life Activities, giving him an elevated platform and a good excuse to dial-up the anti-abortion rhetoric. The leadership of the pro-life committee has often been a bellwether for the direction of the bishops’ conference on cultural issues. It was most recently held by O’Malley, who emphasized a consistent ethic of life narrative, but now goes back to a prelate who will likely stress abortion as the most important issue for Catho…
Read More…索《诺亚方舟》宗教与伦理维度较有深度的博客和专栏，新闻媒体也确实时有报道宗教人士对此片的赞誉，甚至一些保守派对此片持肯定态度。确实，正如我在Facebook上看到的，声称所有基督徒——即使说所有保守派基督徒——都反对《诺亚方舟》是极其不负责的；不论新闻头条如何引导我们，我们必须知道基督徒关于这类事情的态度是有很大差异的。 此外，宗教保守派并不是唯一不满的团体，阿伦诺夫斯基、罗素·克劳对福音派不屑他们的电影感到不满，彪马叔（Bill Maher）一如既往地对任何虔诚宗教信仰不满，很多其他人也在表达对保守派的愤慨的不满。任何报道宗教保守派态度的文章下的评论栏，都充斥着人们因保守派的愤怒而愤怒的情绪。 （一个摘自Slate网站的很有代表性的评论道：我真是震惊了，竟然还有这么多蠢货相信洪水的故事，或者说全部的圣经故事。他们仍然相信有一个看不见的至高者在天上控制着地上的一切。太TMD不可思议了！） 宗教保守派愤怒，人们又因这愤怒而愤怒，这一切让人们容易忘记去深入思考“究竟是什么让宗教批评家对此电影反…
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…mas A. Carlson University of Chicago Press, 2008 Thomas A. Carlson’s last book, Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming of God, dealt largely with death. Carlson is a brooding yet incisive philosopher, a professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. By connecting Martin Heidegger’s understanding of life in the shadow of death with how certain Christian mystics thought of life under the gaze of God, he uncovered their…
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…r God in the Sixties? What sparked your interest? I graduated from High School in 1967, took a year off to see the world in the merchant marine, ended up in the McCarthy for President campaign, and landed at Harvard the next year in time for the first student takeover. I was in SF during the summer of ’68, when chaos was simmering, and in Chicago in August of ’68 when chaos erupted. I did the dope and lived the life. The sixties, as they did so ma…
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…ng the first computer to communicate over the internet. Upon entering the room that was the net’s place of origin, Kleinrock looks into the camera and tells us: “We are now entering a sacred location…a holy place.” Looking at a notebook that casually records the first internet connection on October 29, 1969, Kleinrock makes a comparison to the guy on Columbus’s ship who first spotted land and then made a note in the ship’s log, adding, “that docum…
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…oint Committee on Religious Liberty, and now has an affiliation with the Brookings Institution, is one of the country’s best authorities on church-state separation law, and an advocate for enforcement of the Establishment Clause. Not only would Rogers herself be surprised to be on the list, I’d imagine, but so would the Christian right itself: one of its core aims is the reversal of Supreme Court jurisprudence on the separation of church and state…
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