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Religion and Science: Toward a Postmodern Truce
The New Atheists, armed with swords and cudgels, are still doing old-fashioned battle with religion; but they haven't noticed that the skirmish may have passed them by. Are religion and science poised for a truce?
Mythmaking 101, or, Why We Believe in Death Panels
Forget what you learned about myth from Joseph Campbell—this death panel rumor is the real deal: values masquerading as truth, all in service of one heckuva group fantasy.
Satanic or Silly: Does Yale Press Censorship of Cartoons Insult Muslims?
While the rioting over the Danish cartoons seems to be well behind us, Yale University Press recently removed the images from a new scholarly work on the topic. Do Muslim extremists need a scholarly book as pretext with two wars being fought in Muslim nations and an ongoing crisis in Gaza? The problem isn’t with these images, but with the ubiquitous Islamophobia in the United States.
‘Soul Murder’ in the American Workplace
As the media yawns at the latest unemployment numbers, our columnist seeks religious leadership on the taboo subject of our dysfunctional relationship to work. For even if the economy recovers and “full employment” returns, we will still be encountering a workplace that remains a site of utter terror in some instances and a site of routine abuse and low-grade anxiety in others.
Rarefied Islamophobia: When Americans Duplicate the European Cultural Talk
By presenting itself as a disinterested collection of “facts” and “data,” an alarmist new book about the Muslim threat to Europe has been taken more seriously than your standard Islamophobic pamphlet.
On the Taliban’s Hit List: An Exiled Pakistani Singer’s Plea to Save Music
An interview with a singer marked for death by the Taliban. Curiously, while the Taliban claims that music is a violation of Islamic law, they do have their own melodies and hymns.
Afghan Idol: Can a Talent Competition Save a Nation?
An interview with the director of Afghan Star, a documentary that follows a tense but cathartic talent competition.
Israeli Jesus: More Popular Than Ever
The staging in Jaffa of a controversial play with Jesus as central character is shut down by protests—but not for the reasons one might imagine.
In the Church of Lincoln
We’ve made Abraham Lincoln into a secular saint, as a visit to the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois—complete with relics and incense—easily confirms. But what of his cutthroat skill in the political arena? Contemporary politicians can’t compete.
Oh My God...
What does the word “God” mean? Anything and everything, depending on whether you’re a Bible-believer or an atheist, a rap artist or a writer for South Park, a peyote-eater or Meg Ryan in a diner...
Baby Dolls, Sex Dolls, and Ritual Objects
From a man in Japan who has romantic attachment to a pillow, to boom in realistic baby dolls, to a movie about a man who falls deeply in love with a life-size silicon woman, our craze for surrogate objects reveals more than simple fetishism.
Let The Sun Shine In: Marriage Equality Comes to Broadway
The quintessential protest musical, Hair, is back on Broadway some forty years later, with the spotlight on what many consider to be the biggest civil rights issue of our era: marriage equality.
Anachronistic Arrogance: How Scorning Our Intellectual Mothers and Fathers Makes Us Real Dumb Real Fast
We might be tempted to dismiss the entire legacy of an artist or thinker whose political position or moral beliefs do not accord with our own enlightened views. We forget that we, like they, are products of an age—and that what we are throwing away might be worth far more than the pieties we cling to.
When Religion Goes Missing in the Modern Museum
The brand-new Acropolis Museum, designed to showcase the repatriated plunder of another century, has instead a few other things to offer—among them, views of other museum-goers from beneath, as well as a newly censored video showing Greek Christians hard at work destroying Classical art.
Christianity Without the Cross
A new book investigates the history of the crucifix in early Christianity and develops a political theology of this-worldly salvation.
Give Me That Small Screen Religion
For viewers whose search for meaning is not confined to institutional religion, the television landscape abounds with religious and moral themes. And whether it’s euthanasia, polygamy, angels, demons, or clerics doing cameos, treatment of religion on the small screen is often surprisingly sophisticated.
Harvest of Corruption: The Shame of the Scandal in New Jersey
Last week’s corruption bust is not the tale of a uniquely Jewish form of organized crime, a “Kosher Nostra,” but a sordid chapter in a broadly human tragedy—albeit with a lot of local color.
Body Language: Michael Jackson and the Illogic of White Superiority
The King of Pop’s failing body revealed the vulnerabilities of whiteness as the norm, forcing us to rethink assumptions about what can be called ‘flesh tone.’
Cafeteria Cockroaches and Synagogue-State Relations in Israel
Set against the backdrop of the recent closure of a Knesset cafeteria due to an unkosher cockroach, Shalom Goldman takes an entertaining and meandering look at the state of affairs in Israel. Touching on topics as disparate as the alliteration-happy Israeli media and racist policy proposals, Goldman brings into sharp relief some of the tensions in Israeli religious and cultural life, much of which remains at the mercy of the Orthodox rabbinate.
The Next Generation of the Pro-Life Movement
Young people are being trained by militant anti-abortion groups to be informed, media-savvy, publicity-oriented foot soldiers in the battle to outlaw abortion.