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Good Without God: The Ethics of Atheism

By Becky Garrison

…r billboards, big white lettering against a background of a fluffy-clouded sky, ask “Are You Good Without God?” The answer: “Millions are.” It’s like a kinder, gentler Atheist Bus campaign. The CoR campaign ties into the release of Greg Epstein’s book Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain of Harvard University, is planning a 12-city tour, coordinated with United CoR. He also plans to partic…

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

By Peter Laarman

…unction as a kind of deus ex machina to keep Toller from blowing the joint sky high during the anniversary event at First Reformed. Mary steps into the parsonage and discovers the half-crazed pastor (who’s late for the service) about to do the deed; she embraces him, and they’re filmed in a kind of swooning motion as we hear “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” being sung haltingly in the church next door. One could read this juxtaposition as a hint…

Hillary Clinton Won the Catholic Vote After All, So Dems Should Stay Pro-Choice, Right?

By Patricia Miller

…around in 2020 and most will have gone to that great election booth in the sky by 2024. Similarly, the Hispanic vote went overwhelmingly for Clinton at 74% to 19%, for a massive 55% advantage. Of course, at least some of this can be accounted for by Trump’s hostility toward Hispanic immigrants and may not carry over to future Republican candidates. But young voters have a tendency to stick with the party they first vote for, so it’s likely that Tr…

Harry Potter Gone Bad: Lev Grossman’s The Magicians

By Donna Freitas

…and Elizabeth Knox’s extraordinary fantasy duet Dreamhunter and Dreamquake number among my greatest reads. So I opened The Magicians eagerly, poised to lose myself in a story the Times called “a Harry Potter for adults,” only to realize several chapters in that the aptly-named Quentin Coldwater (a boy with a talent for spells and sorcery who is whisked away to a secret school for magic called “Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy”) was, chapter…

So Deep a Wound: Home, and the novels of Marilynne Robinson

By Garret Keizer

…similarity between Gilead and Home is the homage Robinson pays to prairie, sky, and pancakes. Home is a radically anti-Gnostic novel, not only in its glorification of materiality but also in its implied rejection of the spiritual hierarchism in which a reader of Gilead and an admirer of John Ames might be tempted to indulge. Jack is no less holy in his way than the Rev. Ames is in his; neither is going to a higher heaven than the other. That is an…

Even Amid Controversy, ‘My Soul Still Sings,’ Says UMC’s First Lesbian Bishop

By Sunnivie Brydum

…is located in the UMC’s Western jurisdiction, formally called the Mountain Sky Episcopal Area, the bishop acknowledges. More than any other UMC region, the western jurisdiction celebrates the diversity that sets it apart from more conservative regions. Because of its geographical position, the region over which Oliveto now presides is diverse of language, race, nationality, age, culture, sexual orientation, and gender identity. “We’ve been able to…

Heroes: Sex and the Single Superhero

By Nick Street

…eated only once, noted a cynic philosopher, and that was by Hephaestion’s thighs—laid the groundwork for the subsequent flourishing of the Greek-loving Romans. The main difference between the enactment of the heroic archetype in the past and the present is our contemporary squeamishness about the homoerotic vibe that usually hums just beneath the surface of the drama. We try to banish that gayness, or at least keep it at bay, but the pesky thing a…

Dreaming Cyborg Dreams: Virtual Identity and Religious Experience

By Rachel Wagner

…in the game, “Koresh’s energy comes from massive Bibles that rain from the sky. Those Bibles also rain bullets and turn federal agents into Davidian followers.” After considering this game, we are prompted to ask with Sherry Turkle: “Do our real-life selves learn lessons from our virtual personae? Are these virtual personae fragments of a coherent real-life personality?” A game like this raises some disturbing but profound questions about degrees…

The Heart of Texas Ain’t Hateful: An Open Letter to Lawmakers From a Texan Trans Queer Latinx

By Robyn Henderson-Espinoza

…l fall victim to the fear-mongering and hostility that was elevated to the highest office in the country last November. I implore you to deeply consider the message these bills send—if not out of respect for our state’s political history of welcome, then at least with reverence to the many faith traditions in Texas that offer friendship and hospitality to the stranger. As with many of you, I am sure, faith was a central piece of my upbringing. In…

Is it Okay to Celebrate the Death of Rush Limbaugh — or Should We Let the Dead Judge the Dead?

By Daniel Schultz

…day. It might be fairly objected that that’s exactly what he’d want, but then every devil chooses his own hell, as Milton tells us in describing Satan falling from the sky. Speak evil, speak no evil, whatever. Just be free, and grateful that you’re still alive to have the choice….