In Going Rogue: An American Life, Palin describes, perhaps for the first time in the history of political autobiography, a furtive trip to an out-of-state drugstore to obtain a do-it-yourself pregnancy test.
Saint Sarah: Is Sarah Palin the Next Jerry Falwall? Read More »
I don’t care much for bland spirituality, so at yoga class I generally tune out the prelude, when the teacher reads aloud—as is the custom—an inspirational passage on which to meditate. Recently, though, I was startled to attention when the teacher chose a paragraph on compassion from the Dalai Lama’s bestseller The Art of Happiness.
Do Yoga’s Hindu Roots Matter? Read More »
Do Jews believe in heaven? I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve been asked this question. Modern people—and especially Jews raised in the Reform tradition—are flummoxed by the notion of heaven, and the rabbis are less than helpful. “Jews believe it is this life that matters, not the next”: You hear this
How Jews Invented Heaven Read More »
There are those who believe that science will eventually explain everything—including our enduring belief in heaven. The thesis here is very simple: heaven is not a real place, or even a process or a supernatural event. It’s something that happens in your brain as you die. I first encountered this idea as I was researching
Can Science Explain Heaven? Read More »
“Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife” by Lisa Miller (Harper-Collins ISBN 978-0-06-055475-0) “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,
Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination With The Afterlife Read More »
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 »
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 »
