Before noon last Friday, April 7, we were presented with a trinity of mass media stories about ancient Christianity: a “lost gospel” of Judas appeared on the front page of the New York Times; a British court decided Dan Brown did not plagiarize from Baigent
In his new book, The Baptizing of America, Rabbi James Rudin speaks of a developing American “Christocracy.” Kevin Phillips, in American Theocracy, writes about a developing “theocracy.” Rudin is a moderate and Phillips has carefully detailed his own odyssey. Reviews of Phillips are coming in
Is God a terrorist? Many self-professed Christians seem to think so. The devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina provided a sodden, gruesome opportunity for some who call themselves Christians to vent their distortions of the religion of Jesus. They did so by extending the
“Should I feel bad that I feel good when bad things happen to other people?” That is a paraphrase of friends’ inquiries in recent weeks. “Other people” here does not refer to just “any people.” If it did, feeling thus would be a big sin
Asked to comment on the role of faith in contemporary politics at his April 28, 2005, news conference, President Bush responded with three salient statements, enumerated here in order of their delivery: 1) “I view religion as a personal matter”; 2) “I think a person
We live in an age and a country that struggles to distinguish partisan politics and social policy from religious values and proclamations. The legal recognition of gay marriage, for instance, is opposed by some for violating God’s will and Old Testament decree, and favored by
Last October I wrote a column for Sightings presenting evidence that African American political participation is directly influenced by the content of black religious beliefs (“Black Churches: Liberation or Prosperity?”). Specifically, my piece suggested that black liberation theology and the prosperity gospel offer radically different
We are a society that loves “solutions.” The word combines America’s can-do spirit of self-reliance and its capitalist impulse to sell things. And so “solutions” has become a marketing buzzword, a sudden synonym for “products.” The Solutions Catalog offers “products that make life easier.” Better
Traditionally, Christian observation of Pentecost has recalled and celebrated the conversion of diverse peoples. The apostles preached to “devout Jews from every nation under heaven,” and “each one heard them speaking in the native language of each” (Acts 2:5-6). Beginning in Australia in 1997, and
In a speech almost a year ago to U.S. troops, President Bush declared: “The freedom you defend is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world; it is God’s gift to