Books

Books, RD10QMarch 29, 2012

What Do Islamophobes Have in Common with the Taliban?

By John Feffer

“The Taliban and the Islamophobes have a very similar reading of Islam, and their political fates are in part dependent on this shared understanding of the religion. Those of us in the vast middle between these two extremes can take very concrete steps to end the divide between the West and Islam that exists nowhere more strongly than in the minds of these extremists. I offer three concrete recommendations at the end of Crusade 2.0.”

(A)theologies, BooksMarch 29, 2012

Fight the Power: How to Read, and Re-Read, the Book of Revelation

By Wil Gafney

American Christians assume that what prophecy does is predict specific events to happen. And of course that’s the way the Book of Revelation has been read. They read it, as you say, as predicting this means this, or the beast is this. But prophesy, as we know, is a highly interpretative art, and the way this book lives and has lived for two thousand years is by interpretation and reinterpretation.

(A)theologies, BooksMarch 21, 2012

Does the Inquisition Explain the Modern World?

By Gordon Haber

A new book of popular history provides an exhaustive and detailed history of the brutal yet bureaucratic Inquisition, arguing that it helps explain what the world is today.

(A)theologies, BooksMarch 19, 2012

Awakening, Counter-Awakening, and the End of Church

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

“What the feminist movement and the LGBT movement have become for religious communities is a test of hospitality. Are you really open to accepting and welcoming everyone? Is the personhood of the gay couple as welcome as the personhood of the straight couple? It’s not just simply what your political position is about the rights of these people, but are these people really people? And are they people with their full wisdom, their full experience, their full sense of who they are? Are they really, truly welcomed into the deepest realms of making community?”

(A)theologies, BooksMarch 6, 2012

Living Between Worlds: Muslim, American, Five Percenter

By Hussein Rashid

Michael Muhammad Knight is living in that liminal space, not crossing thresholds of belonging and closing the door. He walks back and forth, and the text conveys that sense of unsettledness. Intentionally or not, Knight forces the reader to think about how we define ourselves and how much agency we actually have in that process.

Books, RD10QFebruary 9, 2012

Sex, Violence, Art, and Religion

By Kent L. Brintnall

The vision of justice and political progress that reigns in American culture and progressive religious circles is one of restoring the individual’s dignity, which imagines the individual—even as a member of a community—as somehow whole. This vision of wholeness, however, often has to function differentially: for my wholeness to be meaningful, then someone somewhere, if only imaginatively and fantastically, has to be understood as lacking wholeness, as needing restoration.

Books, RD10QFebruary 6, 2012

God or Gay, No Need to Choose Sides

By Jay Michaelson

“The book for me is personal as well as political. A lot of people, myself included, were raised to believe that religion and sexual minorities were incompatible—that it really is God versus Gay. Personally, I chose the ‘God’ side for ten years, repressing my sexuality and cutting myself off from other people. Even when I finally gave up, I still thought that coming out would be the end of my religious life. In fact, it was the beginning of it.”

(A)theologies, Books, Culture, Politics/LawFebruary 3, 2012

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided Explores the Dark Side of Positive Thinking

By Michelle Goldberg

A new book reveals the historical roots and conservative uses of the positive thinking movement, showing how it encourages victim-blaming, political complacency, and a culture-wide flight from realism.

Books, RD10QFebruary 3, 2012

Papal Profanity: The Vatican’s Pagan Museum

By Louis A. Ruprecht

When the last non-Italian pope until John Paul II, a Dutch pope (Adrian VI), came to Rome for the first time. The cardinals proudly gave him a tour of the Belvedere. He was shocked and outraged, informing them (in Latin no less) that “these are nothing but pagan idols!” He threatened to sell off the whole collection, and in the interim built cabinets for them, locked the doors, and kept the key to himself.

Books, Politics/LawJanuary 23, 2012

Is Liberalism Islamic?: An Interview with Mustafa Akyol

By Haroon Moghul

“This book is mainly about the problem of freedom in Islam. I argue that Islam, as its very core, is a religion that liberated the individual from the bond of the tribe and similar collective bodies. But I also show how the initial impetus of the faith was partly overshadowed as a result of some early theological controversies, and, moreover, political decisions. This also means that some of those early debates can be reopened, and coercive elements in Islamic law and culture can be reformed. And I am saying all these within a particularly Turkish outlook, as I explain the little known history of ‘Muslim liberalism’ that emerged in the late Ottoman Empire and modern-day Turkey.”