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Take the Van Gogh Challenge: Doctor Who Part VII

By Gabriel Mckee

…primarily about describing the world as it is (although it should take our best understanding of the natural world into account), but about depicting the world as it could be, and transforming it into that better vision of reality. And of course, when religion takes a harmful view of the future, it can often contribute to bringing about a minor apocalypse. This episode ended with the Doctor and Amy not having managed to prevent Van Gogh’s suicide,…

The Meaning of Make Believe (Why Religion Doesn’t Have to Be “Real”)

By Neil Ellingson

…ver I went—in my backpack to school, biking through my neighborhood. At my best friend’s house, we marched around his yard and the woods behind his house pretending we were preachers prophesying the end of the world. It gave me a thrilling sense of power to possess this secret knowledge that everyone else was too blind to see. Whether as a prop in playacting or simply toted around my pre-adolescent life, having the white inscrutable Bible close at…

David Brat: Catholic, Calvinist, and Libertarian, Oh My!

By Julie Ingersoll

…model, is severely restrained in its authority over economic activity. The best check on the depravity of individuals who make up the civil government is the decentralization of authority into the distinct spheres; the best check on the depravity of human beings in the economy is the decentralization of the market created by competition. Historian Michael McVicar has this called this “theocratic libertarianism”: it creates an economic zone free of…

Quantum Theology: Our Spooky Interconnectedness

By Beatrice Marovich

…er words, that in the worst case, theology and science were at war. In the best case, I assumed, they had a rather awkward relationship—something like bad first date. And then I read Catherine Keller’s Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (Routledge, 2003). What occurred was nothing short of a paradigm shift. What Keller was up to was beyond me—in the very best way. She wasn’t doing apologetics (defending theology from its outside objectors)….

Falling in Love With the Earth: Francis’ Faithful Ecology

By Jacob J. Erickson

…biodiversity. (Yale’s Forum for Religion and Ecology assembles some of the best of that content here.) As I read through Laudato si I saw much of the speculation confirmed. Pope Francis reflects on our various ecological ills. He reflects on anthropogenic/human-caused global warming, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, the dangers of unlimited consumerism, the dangers of unlimited and overused technology, “a misguided anthropocentrism,” economic gr…

Repent, Hillary: Trump’s Evangelical Backers Play the Sin Card

By Hollis Phelps

…er told us how to vote, he gave us all the good common sense to choose the best leaders.” It’s important to emphasize that best doesn’t mean perfect, as Abraham, Moses, and David would remind us. The assumption of God’s providence, however, doesn’t work both ways—that is, it can’t be positively applied to Trump’s presumed opponent, Hillary Clinton. That may seem inconsistent, at least on the surface: if God chooses imperfect people, then can’t God…

No, THIS is the Real Christianity…

By Ira Chernus

…is Harold Meyerson’s column, “Hard-Liners for Jesus.” Meyerson, one of the best mainstream pundits out there, charges that there is a huge gap between the teachings of the gospels and the preachings of the “Gospel’s Own Party.” The GOPers tout the old-time religion while violating its biblical precepts, or—to be more exact—the particular biblical precepts that Meyerson approves. He has an easy time finding contradictions between Republican policie…

Aliens, Nanobots, & Microbes: The Science of Secular Apocalypse

By Michael Schulson

…he vanguard of research here. But there seems to be enough evidence, in my best judgment at least, to not dismiss it. Most of the threats you describe in the book are enormous, invisible, and almost impossible for most of us to imagine. Is rational, evidence-based discussion in the public sphere a sufficient tool to grasp something as large and amorphous as a global catastrophe? What does it take? I think you’re exactly right that the mental machi…

How “Mindfulness” Lost Its Mind

By Thomas Joiner

….g., health, education) but: a) it is no miraculous panacea even under the best of conditions; and b) it can be pernicious when mixed with a focus on the self; selflessness is part of the essence of mindfulness, and self-focus perverts it. Regarding its being a panacea, I show in the book how even the best-designed, most robust research on mindfulness is overhyped. Regarding the pernicious effects of self-focus, those are general in a species that…

New Book on Trump and Evangelicals Gets it Mostly Right

By Greg Carey

…tories within evangelicalism. Fea repeatedly notes evangelicals’ mixed (at best) history with respect to race relations. He devotes nine pages to the history of racial fear in the evangelical South, but he never gets messy with the most telling factor: that no other religious group even remotely approaches white evangelicals’ preference for Trump. Race proved one of the most decisive predictors of Trump support, and white evangelicals were the mos…