by The news today is full of stories of James Lee’s take-over of the Discovery Channel headquarters. The stories including earlier pictures of him carrying signs that say: “Discover Channel: Save the Planet.” My question is, why isn’t the news media calling in Al Gore and other leaders of the environmental movement, demanding that they condemn [...]
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by This brief snip of a video interview with Biblical scholar and theologian N.T. Wright is geared towards evangelical Christians, but I thought it was worth sharing here. Wright is not addressing American Catholics, or other American religious people, in this clip. But it’s interesting (and frustrating) to me that evangelicals in the U.S. tend toward [...]
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by My governor, Tim Pawlenty, is at it again. Years ago, after September 11, he used immigration as a “wedge issue,” linking it to terrorism to scare and upset the voters of Minnesota. Now, he has not only waded into the question of revising the 14th amendment on birthright citizenship, saying, “ I think we’re the [...]
Read the full postA project has sent me to reading all things Brandeis. I ran across an interesting statement by Brandeis that may capture an important aspect of the religious practice of fasting. This may seem strange to those who know much about Brandeis. Brandeis lived a very modest lifestyle, but I know of no instance of his [...]
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by Mayor Bloomberg’s speech tonight may go down in history as one of the great American speeches that people are reading a hundred years from now. Time’s Mark Halpern describes it as “best defense, speech of a lifetime.”
Read the full postIt has long been my sense that most men’s sexual orientation is attraction to numerous female partners. Most, at least after marriage, do a pretty good job of controlling that inclination. Even those who cannot control themselves generally profess to believe in the moral and social responsibility to remain monogamous. This may be changing. A [...]
Read the full postI want to follow up on Perry’s post and explain why the debate over the Islamic Center at Ground Zero has changed my view of the Convent at Auschwitz. I use prejudice rather than offense as the starting point. It would be bigoted to oppose a Convent because it’s Christian or a Mosque because it’s [...]
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by Perry has, in his usual measured and thoughtful way, discussed the analogy that some have proposed between the controversy over the convent at Auschwitz, on the one hand, and the Cordoba Project near Ground Zero, on the other. I think there’s a bit more to the analogy than he does, but I’d like to put that [...]
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by In 1657, Peter Stuyvesant, the Governor of New Netherland (now New York), who had no patience for religious diversity, got wind of the presence of Quakers in the settlement at Flushing. He ordered the town officials in Flushing to hand over the Quakers for arrest. The officials refused. They wrote Stuyvesant a letter, the Flushing [...]
Read the full postFurther thoughts on the alleged parallel between opposition to the planned Islamic center (Park51) near Ground Zero and opposition about ten years ago to the building of a convent and the erection of crosses next to the Auschwitz death camps: I wrote in my first post that the relevant question in neither case should be [...]
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