Reader update: The beginning (the end)
Pia Stern, The Beginning (The End), 2005 Dear Readers, On the 18th of this month I will begin teaching at Agnes Scott College. I will have one introductory physics course-lab combination (electricity & magnetism) and one upper-level optics course. I’ve never taught optics before, so I get to learn some new stuff — exciting! I [...]
Yes, The Tree of Life is a Christmas movie
Detail of The Tree of Life‘s theatrical release poster. Image source: blu-ray.com Mark Vernon has a new article up at the Guardian. In it, he says some really worthwhile things about Christian ethics and what makes it distinct. What caught my eye, though, was this passage about art and artists. The greatest artists are not [...]
No place to call home: on Richard Dawkins’ academy, atheists in church, and the emptiness of scientism
Edward Hopper, Dauphinee House, 1932. It’s good to have a home, physical and otherwise. Image source: Museum Syndicate Back in September, I wrote an article for Religion Dispatches about Richard Dawkins’ refusal to teach atheism — his own view — to kids. Of all the things out there with my name on it, it is [...]
The end of the world is coming. We object
Anonymous, Day of the Last Judgment, late 19th century. From what I can remember of the Islam classes I took, the Last Judgment is a very big deal for Muslims, just as it is for Christians. In this jaunty scene, Mohammed sits on the camel in the upper right. Per tradition, his face is blanked [...]
On detachment: what religion can learn from science
Tamara Grizjuk, Detachment, 2002. From 29 November – 20 December, Ms. Grizjuk’s work will be on display at the Agora Gallery in Chelsea, NYC. I believe it will be her first show on this side of the Atlantic, so go check it out if you can. Image source: ARTmine. Used with permission of the artist [...]
Lying on a bed of nails: more on Johnny Cash, the prodigal son, and the truth of stories
Andrei Rabodzeenko, Prodigal Son, 2006 I have received a number of emails and Facebook messages and comments about my latest article at RD. I hope to reply to all of them in time. But I am still on the job hunt. Therefore these must suffice: This post and an expression of thanks to my interlocutors. [...]
Believing in Johnny Cash: An open letter to atheists
I’ve a new piece up at Religion Dispatches. Here’s a taster: Several days ago I was in the car, listening to songs shuffled at random. Just as I pulled into the parking lot I heard the opening lines of “The Legend of John Henry’s Hammer,” recorded at one of Cash’s famous 1968 Folsom Prison shows. [...]
The magnificent defeat
Jack Baumgartner, Jacob Wrestling the Angel of the Lord (2010). Used by permission of the artist The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he [...]
Theology gone bad
Clarence Larkin, Book of Revelation, 1919. Click on the image for a high-resolution (3 MB) version. Amazing, isn’t it? It’s a much nicer presentation that the one I was offered in Sunday school when I was 11, but it has a lot of the same general features. Although Rev. Larkin was by all accounts a [...]
What we have lost
Michael Bailey, Looking Back From Image via I Think I Believe: We are god-obsessed because we have lost God or we are running from God or we are hopelessly seeking Him, and maybe all of these at once. We are god-obsessed the way a child snatched from his mother will always have his heart and [...]
