religion

The Boston Marathon Bombing and The Faith Privilege

May 3, 2013

. This article first appeared in the Algemeiner on April 23, 2013.  You can read the follow up there now: “A Campaign of Willful Blindness on Terrorism.” The Boston Marathon bombing provoked enactment of what has emerged, since 9/11, as a ritual of political theater refined even beyond its long history of performance. Even while [...]

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The Barbaric Subjugation of Women

December 29, 2012

. I once wrote, “The original, unredeemed social and political crime of human history is the displacement and genocidal destruction of aboriginal populations.” Yet there is something prior. We might call it first a human crime, though it transforms almost immediately into a social, then political crime. Unlike the crime against indigenous peoples it has [...]

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Politicians, Faith, and Reason

May 24, 2012

Invariably in American politics, the faith of political candidates will be scrutinized. Because of protestant strains in the nation’s colonial origins and its long-time demographic majority, the scrutiny has always been heightened for the non-Protestant. In the evangelical age, for the Protestant, the scrutiny has taken the form less of a necessary demystification – and [...]

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Good God. Or Not.

December 3, 2010

Image by Andrew Rusk via Flickr Last Friday in Toronto Christopher Hitchens debated Tony Blair on religion. That was bound to be an entertainment. Whether it turned out, in fact, to be so I do not know. You can find out by shelling out your $2.99 (it was $4.99 for the live stream) to the [...]

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History Forgotten, Remembered

September 9, 2010

We forget a lot. It is natural. It is also, at times, convenient. Here is a fascinating and inspiring bit of history, on the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, of how Jews in Palestine, in wishing to practice their religion, were treated by the occupying British because of the Arab intolerance of Jews. In a [...]

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Misreading the Adversary: an Open Mind Prequel

February 19, 2010

I’ve been oppressively busy since the return from Buenos Aires and hadn’t a clue what I might have time to post about today. Yesterday, because the Jewel is beyond oppressively busy with some shindig she’s hosting, project ally and friend S drove me down to San Diego to collect Obelisk from its repair facility. (We’ve [...]

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The American Indian Church

January 3, 2009

Among the goals and legacies of conquest has been that of converting Native Americans to Christianity. Christian churches have been evangelizing on the San Carlos Apache Reservation since soon after Geronimo was captured for the last time and active resistance to the concentration policies on the reservation ceased in 1886. The first Lutheran missionaries arrived [...]

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