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The Bible as Security Blanket, Blindfold, or Weapon

By Amy Benson Brown

…Suskin Ostriker (Rutgers University Press, 2009). Alicia Suskin Ostriker’s latest book of essays will make provocative reading for liberals who want to say “Yes, We Can” to taking back the Bible as it seeks to pry a few more fingers from the iron grip conservatives have had on its meaning in the American cultural imagination. This Bible is not, Ostriker wants us to see, the sole property of those who deny the links between “spirituality and sex, s…

Louisiana Students Must Choose: Religion or Science

By Lauri Lebo

…arming, and human cloning” as subjects in which educators are required to “promote critical thinking skills.” It also requires “supplemental materials” to be used alongside textbooks in public school science class. Forrest and the Louisiana Citizens for Science lobbied fiercely against the creationist language, but, in the end, only three members of the House voted against it because they feared crossing Jindal, who is closely allied the Louisiana…

Harry Potter Gone Bad: Lev Grossman’s The Magicians

By Donna Freitas

…children’s literature? Bubbling up under the surface of The Magicians (the latest novel from Time magazine book critic Lev Grossman) is the stuff of these same sincere elements—the kind many readers relish when looking to escape with a good book. On first glance, he offers us not only a world filled with magic, but a school for young magicians, the adventures of aspiring young sorcerers, magical creatures and spells, fantastic landscapes galore, a…

Defending the Helpless: New Bible Highlights Poverty and Justice

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…:8-9 to be exact. The poll is in service to the American Bible Society’s latest vanity Bible — the Poverty and Justice Bible that features a cover depicting breaking chains. On the inside you’ll find more than 2,000 verses that deal with issues of poverty and justice bolded by a bright orange highlight. “The Poverty and Justice Bible seeks to challenge the notion that the Bible is outdated and proves that God — not politicians, celebrities or ev…

Just War Tradition v. David Brooks on 9/11 Trials

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…time of war. This may well be why the president is taking so long to commit himself to a new strategy in Afghanistan. He is trying to re-imagine what that war is about, against whom it is being waged, and what its new purposes are, once we stop imagining it as “the latest front in a global war on terror.” That requires imagination, as well as determination and strength of purpose. This Guantanamo decision is thus perhaps the first step toward the…

Letter to the Editor From the Author of Dying for Heaven

By The Editors

…ch sent the following letter in response to Bruce Lawrence’s review of his latest book. In it, Prof. Lawrence wrote that Dying for Heaven is a “bizarrely casual, yet deeply serious, treatise,” adding that, “the thesis of the book itself would be a laughing matter were the author not intent on altering the way that the defense establishment—and not just academics or scholars of religion—think about ‘holy pleasure.’” Prof. Glucklich writes: Dying fo…

The Gospel of Contradiction: An Interview with Mary Gordon

By Nathan Schneider

…ection of short stories. She is also New York’s official State Author. Her latest book, Reading Jesus, brings a writer’s eye to the narrative focal point of the Christian scriptures, the four Gospels. After a lifetime struggling with her Catholic faith (and her father’s abandoned Judaism), Gordon turned to these texts more resolutely than she ever had before. What she found there is messy and contradictory, far from the packaged certainties of rad…

Good Hair, Good God! The Divine Politics of African-American Hair

By Anthea Butler

…C) from the very beginnings of the denomination: their holiness and purity codes in the early 20th century forbade the processing or pressing of hair (like Madam C.J. Walker’s revolutionary hair-straightening process.) As the denomination grew in cities during the 1940s, straight hair became the currency of charismatic authority and power for the church mothers and pastors’ wives. Lighter skin, straighter hair, and European features became a preci…

Will Hate Crime Laws Redeem Us All?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…betrays both their Judeo as well as their Christian roots. Writing in her latest book, The Case for God, Karen Armstrong notes that in Jewish tradition, “rabbis regarded hatred of any human being made in God’s image as tantamount to atheism, so murder was not just a crime against humanity but a sacrilege: ‘Scripture instructs us that whatsoever sheds human blood is regarded as if he had diminished the divine image.’ […] To humiliate anybody, even…

Bishop John Shelby Spong Declares Victory: Is it Premature?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…I will strive to not let my own personal connections cloud my take on his latest work — A Manifesto! — in which Bishop Spong quite eloquently spells out why he’s done arguing over whether or not gays and lesbians should be fully welcomed within not just the church but society. He writes: The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accep…