activism

(A)theologies

Can Atheist Billboards Kill Religion?

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Billboards, rallies, biting commentary—all this is meant to deconstruct the cultural worlds framing sacred texts and ideas, and to do deep damage to the stronghold religion has on life in the United States. I’m in favor of billboards, as well as other organized efforts to advance progressive values and life-affirming ethics. Why should theists alone be allowed to present their ideas in grand ways? The anger coming from theists when confronted with the absurdity behind some of their own faith commitments shouldn’t silence non-theists, and it doesn’t require special handling by public figures.

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Sexuality/Gender

AIDS Anniversary: Thirty is the New Eternity

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The 30th wedding anniversary calls for pearls, various websites say. And yet, we have no weddings really, from the federal point of view. So what does the 30th mean? Is it the beginning of the end? The end of the beginning? The eschaton? For some, AIDS/HIV is one of the mythic horsemen of the apocalypse. The Salvation Army writes of the “three horsemen of the Russian Apocalypse—AIDS” Others write of the “hybrid horseman of the apocalypse: the global AIDS pandemic.” We debate whether an HIV-positive diagnosis—or even an AIDS diagnosis—is the end of the world. And we write of “the virus at the end of the world.” The victories seem somehow pyrrhic.

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Politics/Law

Fueling Activism: An Interview with Bill McKibben

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Author/activist Bill McKibben led this past weekend’s encirclement of the White House urging the the Obama Administration to block construction of a 1,700-mile pipeline to transport tar sands oil from Alberta to the Gulf. As McKibben savored a new protest-triggered State Department inquiry into a too-cozy environmental review process related to the pipeline, contributing editor Peter Laarman caught up with him on some religious dimensions of climate-change activism.

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