Religion Dispatches
…ere a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? The DaVinci Code. Now, that’s a profitable reworking of Christian history. I wouldn’t have to worry about paying for my daughter’s college education. Seriously, I wish I could have written Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age. It is one of those magisterial books about history that has become part of history. Books like that happen once in a generation. Sigh. What’s your next book? It is on…
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…ination, one that could embrace a revolution led by Freemasons and uncover new scriptures written on secret golden plates. Free from the burden of Europe’s institutional rivalries, it has always refused to see scientific reason as a threat to faith. In the 19th century, it gave birth to “metaphysical” movements like Christian Science and spiritualism, which staked a claim to science convincing enough to attract the interest of some leading scienti…
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…art company. It is important to recall that Catholic anti-Modernism is not new; it too has a history. In fact, Catholic anti-Modernism is celebrating an ironic centennial. As Claus Arnold documents in his recent analysis of newly-released documents in the Vatican Secret Archives, the Church came only slowly to its current theological anti-Modernism (his essay, “Antimodernismo e magistero Romano: la redazione della Pascendi,” Rivista di storia del…
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…not sure she has subverted older paradigms as much as made them shiny and new with her irresistible narrative style. Indeed, the film could be read as a fairly simplistic rendering of women as the source of evil; tales that were born among ancient Mediterranean patriarchies, but have had a long and troubled history in the United States as well. In my work, I have explored the connection between misogyny, American religion, and images of sexuality…
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…with his laudatory comments following the viewing of Under The Roman Sky—a new, hagiographic documentary about his controversial predecessor. All of this provides context for the recent introduction of anti-Semitic discourse into the Church’s response to pedophilia allegations, which represents a provocative new twist in the ongoing saga. “Babini’s” buffoonish accusations, incendiary but familiar, are not nearly as striking as the analogy Cantalam…
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…r worldly peers while simultaneously beholden to an arcane and restrictive code of behavior—is actually rather compelling. “Being tugged in one direction by the secular world and in another by the religious world, they have styled their own compromise,” he says, “[and yet] they also feel an unbearable sense of loneliness and despair.” But the extent to which Cohen understands his own motivations for journeying into Christendom is unclear. “I’m hop…
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…of essays explores the links between religion, culture, and GMOs. In their new book, Acceptable Genes: Religious Traditions and Genetically Modified Foods, Conrad G. Brunk and Harold Coward have compiled a unique set of religious, cultural, and indigenous perspectives on genetically modified foods. Many of us are aware of at least some of the ways biotechnology has invaded the supermarket. But dietary practice often intersects with religious faith…
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…f the top stories that intersect religion and science, there was some good news, some not-so-good news and some downright depressing news. Of course, no list of the top science/religion stories can be done without first acknowledging the obvious political agenda some religious conservatives have in fostering this divide, and sadly, Rick Santorum is still at it. The former Pennsylvania senator, who has long led efforts to combat the teaching of evo…
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…ournal attributed President Truman’s decision to recognize Israel to ‘‘the New York vote’’—code for the Jewish vote. Reading the Christian Century’s articles in the light of later developments, it seems that these reservations about creating a Jewish state were the opinions of a small elite. As Truman biographer David McCullough has noted, Truman’s motives in granting Israel diplomatic recognition were both political and religious. Writing of the…
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…ion from a grounded Jewish space and in a textured Jewish vocabulary. This new tenor, tone, sensibility, aesthetic, and hermeneutic of social justice as a textually-grounded Jewish practice opens up the door to a new mode of envisioning Judaism and Jewish identity which moves beyond denominational labels (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Renewal, Humanist…). The Judaism that is being constructed by these practices is a Judaism wh…
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