It doesn’t take a degree from Harvard to see that in today’s world, a person needs to know something about religion. The conflicts between the Israelis and the Palestinians; between Christians, Muslims, and animists in Africa; between religious conservatives and progressives at home over abortion and gay marriage—all these relate, if indirectly, to what rival […]
Should Harvard Have A Religion Department? Read More »
It is understandable to want to run screaming from a “spiritual memoir”—especially when you discover it’s been written by a 27-year-old. Memoirs are bad enough, with their cringe-making confessions, their sordid tale-telling, and their self-important self-examination. Why, the reader too often wonders, should we care about you? Spiritual memoirs frequently inhabit the lowest tier of
Stephanie Saldana’s Memoir Bread of Angels Read More »
Americans like values, but they don’t know which values they like best. The hype over Tim Tebow’s pro-life ad—sponsored by the conservative faith-and-values group Focus on the Family and scheduled to air during Sunday’s Super Bowl—is a case in point. When a corporation uses a television ad to sell us a product (car, gadget, hamburger)
The 2010 Super Bowl’s Pro-Life Ad Read More »
Redemption America’s evangelicals exiled their leader for insufficient orthodoxy. Now he’s back, and he’s unrepentant. Richard Cizik remembers it this way: he had just come home from a week in Australia and was about to jet off to Paris when he sat down on Dec. 2, 2008 for his post-election interview with NPR’s Terry Gross.
Richard Cizik – an unrepentant former evangelical leader Read More »
Heaven. The word evokes all kinds of images and feelings in the hearts of people virtually everywhere. In some corners, heaven is seen as a vague sense of euphoria, a state of everlasting bliss. In other corners, heaven is a busy place, where eternal progression is the challenge of eternity. In this fine work, Miller,
Publisher’s Weekly on “Heaven” Read More »
Haiti is surely a Job among nations. It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere: half its population lives on less than a dollar a day. With 98 percent of its forests felled and burned for firewood, Haiti is uniquely vulnerable to flooding from hurricanes. In 2008 four storms in as many weeks left
Why God Hates Haiti Read More »
In 2004 the members of St. James Church in tony Newport Beach, Calif., voted to secede from the Episcopal Church of the United States. Like dozens of other conservative Episcopal churches at the time, St. James found the theology of its denomination insufficiently orthodox (and the consecration of a gay Episcopal prelate unbiblical). So it,
St James Church Secedes from the Episcopal Church Read More »
In the post-apocalyptic world of The Book of Eli, the most precious things on earth are a trial-size bottle of shampoo; a cache of hand wipes, individually wrapped; and the last existing copy of the King James Bible. Denzel Washington, cast as the cowboy-monk Eli, is on a mission from God. He has to carry
Eli’s Coming – Denzel Takes on the Good Book Read More »
Seven percent of Americans say they “attend religious services in someone’s home.” This surprising little fact was buried in a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which showed that Americans are as loosey-goosey in their religious practices as many have long suspected. About a quarter of Americans, according to Pew,
House of Worship: Finding Spirituality at Home Read More »
The YouTube video is almost too corny to believe. The year is 1955. A young boy, about 6 and afflicted with polio, is sitting on Oral Roberts’s lap. With praise and prayer, the preacher touches the boy all over his legs, ankles and feet, begging the Lord to restore movement to the limp and paralyzed
An American Original: Oral Roberts Read More »