Why Are Muslims So Concerned with Muhammad?
To say Muslims are offended by portrayals of Muhammad is missing the point…
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Jesus and the GOP (and some Whitney)
A professor, a rabbi and two comedians discuss religion and politics.
Read MoreLaura Ingraham Hangs Up on Rev. Over Jesus/Abortion Comments
WWJD about abortion? Well, we sort of know.
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A Neoconservative Jesus, Certified Kosher
After some perfunctory praise of the last three popes, Boteach gets down to his Glenn Beck-ish business: “The American Evangelical community has proven the most stalwart and reliable friend of Israel in the United States.” Christians and Jews are now “brothers” because “together they confront the implacable foe of Islamist terrorism.”
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Inventing Jesus: An Interview with Bart Ehrman
It’s usually clear to Bart Ehrman who loves him and who hates him. Evangelical Christians have been raking Ehrman over the coals for years for his rejection of biblical inerrancy—and atheists and humanists have embraced his writing as ammunition in the fight against the evils of organized religion. In his new book, Did Jesus Exist?, Ehrman debunks the work of so-called “mythicists”—writers who have argued that a man named Jesus who taught about the coming Kingdom of God never really existed, and that the religions created around him are nothing but fantasy.
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Apoplectic about Abortion: One Woman’s Emotional Roller Coaster
I used to be angry, now I am apoplectic. I also used to be fraulein and now I am a frau. I used to be a mademoiselle and now I am madame, a señorita and now a señora. In other words, I am a mature woman whose human rights are vanishing before her very eyes. For a long time, I have become habituated to freedom, confusing myself, apparently, with a human being—or even a man. I don’t like it when Congress treats me like a girl by hacking away at abortion rights and talking about eliminating funds for family planning.
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Easter: The Underdog Holiday
Once a major factor in shaping the modern calendar, Easter has fallen in significance, to put it mildly, which is another reason I think it’s tops. I tend to like underdogs and faded glory. I live in Baltimore.
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Call Me Pesach
In Yiddish, Jews reacted to the stories wafting out of Holy Week churches with a mixture of fear and derision. The Christian savior was regularly referred to by playful nicknames like Yoizel, Getzel, and most creatively Yoshke Pandre. The layers of meaning in this last name are astonishing: Using the diminutive suffix “–ke,” Yoshke translates as “Little Joe.”
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Fight the Power: How to Read, and Re-Read, the Book of Revelation
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.
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A Valentine for the World…and for the Church I Left
I’m not an unbeliever. No way. My theology is fuzzy, a bit of a smorgasbord—Emerson and Tolstoy and Jesus and Augustine. I would be happily worshipping with Quakers if I could find any; the “inner light” makes so much sense to me. The truth is, I respect faith. I love the sacrificial love God inspires in human beings. I worship the Creator of an amazingly beautiful, diverse, and exciting planet. It’s obvious the hand of God is everywhere and always has been. Is that enough common ground for peace between us? Don’t answer. I’m afraid it’s not.
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