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Our Last “Genius” Stephen Hawking is Gone… Cause for Worry Or Inspiration?

By Ed Simon

…of daemonic inspiration. As philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn wrote in his 1962 classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the “scientific enterprise as a whole does from time to time… open up new territory… and test long-accepted belief. Nevertheless, the individual engaged on a normal research problem is almost never doing any one of these things.” Even Newton, arguably the first universally celebrated scientific genius, for whom relics w…

A Nation of Believers and Nonbelievers—Second Thoughts on Obama’s Speech

By Ronald Aronson

…ll of separation” is actually breeched, we worry: can’t this undermine the spirit if not the letter of America’s secular Constitution? And why did Obama submit to an informal religious test during the campaign, being cross-examined by Warren about his personal religious beliefs? Warren asked: “What does it mean to you to trust in Christ? And what does that mean to you on a daily basis?” And Obama dutifully answered. To us this seemed to be a yield…

Does War Make Sense? Science and Religion on the Battlefield

By Nathan Schneider

…Arch-bureaucrat Robert McNamara, who served as secretary of defense between 1961 and 1968, was perhaps more responsible than anyone for making “systems analysis” into the Pentagon credo. “Don’t give me your poetry,” he once retorted to a White House aide’s dour assessment of the war in Vietnam. “Give me something I can put in the computer.” But cybernetics didn’t do much good in a war where there was no clear line between enemy and friend. During…

Religion and Gender Trouble in the Black Arts: Remembering Toni Cade Bambara’s The Black Woman

By Josef Sorett

…the scores of other clergy who took up the topic of Black Power during the 1960s. Father Divine was certainly different from most of the models of spiritual integrity (i.e., Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X) celebrated during the 1960s. It must have been odd for readers to find Father Divine on the pages of The Black Woman in 1970, the same year that Toni Cade took the additional name Bambara as an homage to her African heritage. He was not, by any measu…

Robert Bellah’s Powerful Legacy: A Mixed Blessing for Religious Studies?

By Ivan Strenski

…national ideal “which would lead to a revitalization of the revolutionary spirit of the young republic, so that Americans would once again attract the hope and love of its citizens”? Bellah is invested, even piously so, in American civil religion, and feels called to rally us in its behalf. Habits of the Heart simply intensifies the image of Bellah’s pastoral concern for the moral health of the republic, threatened as it is by impoverishing indiv…

They’re Not Coming Back: The Religiously Unaffiliated and the Post-Religious Era

By Kaya Oakes

…iously unaffiliated Americans, but shows an even sharper increase in their numbers. According to PRRI, in 1990 the religiously unaffiliated made up only 6 percent of adults. From 1998 to 2004, that percentage held steady at around 14 percent, but today, 25 percent of Americans “claim no formal religious identity.” This percentage continues to primarily consist of adults under the age of 50. The survey also makes it clear that this decline began am…

Capitalism and the Anti-Modern Pope

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…against, the progressive spirit of the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960s, and its new “spirit of openness to the modern world.” But what these men understand as “Modern” is not entirely clear. Perhaps a better way to say this is that the target keeps shifting in papal polemics about Modernity. Whereas Modernism was associated with the natural sciences and Liberal theology in the early 20th century, the twinned ideologies of feminism and s…

Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed” Depicts Death Struggle Between Hope and Despair

By Peter Laarman

…for destroying those who destroy the earth. It seems pretty clear that the spirit of radical mystic Thomas Merton hovers over this film. Merton’s name comes up twice in the screenplay, and both Schrader and his protagonist seem to resonate with the words that Merton wrote in 1962 to Ernesto Cardenal, the Nicaraguan theologian, poet, and revolutionary: The world is full of great criminals with enormous power, and they are in a death struggle with e…

Tokyo Governor Says Tsunami is Divine Punishment—Religious Groups Ignore Him

By Levi McLaughlin

…began soliciting relief funds; as an organization that survived the January 17, 1995 earthquake in western Japan and provided relief to residents in Kobe, they are eager to help victims of this latest natural disaster. World Vision Japan is gathering relief funds and is working to aid victims; Caritas Japan, the Catholic charity, is gathering donations and working with dioceses to provide support in the afflicted region; the United Church of Chris…

Omar Ahmad: Muslim, American, Cowboy Boot Aficionado (1965–2011)

By Wajahat Ali

…dialog that we will get to know each other!” He leveraged his good-natured spirit in politics, and was elected to the city council of San Carlos, and from there, to the mayor’s office. In that position, he did what every American mayor does, he fought with the Firemen’s Union. In all his activities, he remained committed to his faith. He helped nurture and train Muslim-American leadership. He was a behind-the-scenes mover, who used his vast entrep…