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Mortal Combat: Risk in the Winter Olympics

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ore at the Olympics, many times. The riskiness of modern athletics was the most obvious component of these, and really of all, Olympic festivals. People who are expected to be dominant in their events either find a way to confirm their preeminence, or suffer the curse of having farther to fall. A South Korean figure skater rose to that challenge; US skier Bode Miller also did so, winning the gold four years after failing so dramatically in Turin….

Faith-Based Bailout

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…llars of taxpayer money is on the line.” Now that’s big money, though he demonstrated no sense that he understands this fact. For how serious a problem? No one knows. And what does this mean for the future? The president’s answer was truly mystifying: “democratic capitalism is the best system ever devised.” That’s a statement of faith, not a reflection on the future. Here yet again, the US president speaks as if there is no tomorrow, answering a q…

The Mouths of Babes

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…l Bank (SNB) has gone through its third CEO in as many months. And perhaps most unsettling, recently consented to a US request for information about tax-dodging account holders, thereby violating the sacrosanct, if suspect, principle of absolute privacy. The details of the adult news cycle confirm the wisdom of the child. Nobody is an expert, not now. Nobody knows what is happening, nor how long it will last. We are truly in uncharted waters, the…

Greek Abbot Arrested for Role in Financial Scandal

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…istmas Eve. He had just returned to the monastery, which is located on the most sacred ground in all of Orthodox Christendom, which we have now discovered to be the only semi-autonomous region of Mount Athos. Father Ephraim was arraigned in Athens two days ago. It is hard to say just what this is all about, but the timing is, to put it mildly, dramatic. The scandal started two years ago, when the revelation of some very sketchy land deals broker…

Church Bloodies Berlusconi’s Nose?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…Right-Mass Media coalition perhaps best symbolized by Berlusconi, who owns most of the major media outlets in Italy. Others have speculated on the power of media images in today’s world, such that mafia connections cannot help, media connections cannot help, and even insuperable wealth cannot help to displace them. In short, the man’s nose was bloodied in a very public way and that symbolizes the end, if not if his career, then at least of his ven…

Famous Mormon Fictionalizes Life Stories

By Joanna Brooks

…e Paul H. Dunn one of the best-loved motivational speakers in the world of Mormonism. Until it was discovered that many of the stories were not true. Dunn had never played for the Cardinals. Harold Lester Brown was alive in Missouri. And lots of men from the Second Battalion made it home alive. At first, Dunn defended his fabrications by comparing the stories to Jesus’ parables. Eventually, though, he apologized to the Mormon people in the Church…

Fearmongering? Yes, But the Fear is Here

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ng to have a debate about the common good. It seems clear that many of the most tumultuous and violent episodes have indeed been choreographed and staged. It is equally clear that such staging does not advance the work of deliberative democracy, as we the people attempt to sort out our own views, demand clarification on matters of record, and hold our leaders accountable for what they do, what they say, how they vote. When a citizen shouts down a…

This is not a Religion Column: Biblical Capitalism

By Jeff Sharlet

…nation battered by unfettered capitalism that it “Repeal a Law a Day.” The most influential of these businessmen for God was a Norwegian immigrant named Abraham Vereide, founder of an annual ritual of piety and politics that survives to this day, the National Prayer Breakfast. In 1935, Vereide created a “fellowship” of Christian businessmen bound together by the idea that God hates government regulation because it interferes with a believer’s abil…

Christmas in Rome: Religion as an Aesthetic Phenomenon

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…e specifically, to Rome at Christmastime. They are snapshots, images, that most endure at such a time: Wednesday noontime: While working in an old archive adjacent to the justly famous Chiesa Nuova (where several imposing scenes for Angels and Demons were shot last year), an elderly woman invites me to return that evening for a concert. The “concert,” such as it was, was a Catholic Mass distinguished by the presence of so many dignitaries in elega…

Is Bill Barr’s Belief in a Powerful President Actually Religious? A ‘High Papal’ Fable

By Ivan Strenski

…ses “instead to trace the currents of Christian influence that have spread most widely, and then most enduringly into the present day.” Dominion attempts nothing short of exploring “how we in the West came to be what we are, and to think the way that we do.” “To live in a Western country is,” therefore, “to live in a society still actually saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions… [that is] moored to its Christian past.” But Holland aims to…