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From Religion to Politics

From the November 2023 Print Edition

The nineteenth century, for all but the most literal-minded, begins with the French Revolution and ends with the First World War. Or in the words of one influential overview of nineteenth-century Germany: “In the beginning was Napoleon.” At the end were trenches, tanks mired in mud, mustard gas, . . . . Continue Reading »

Secularism as Sexism

From the Aug/Sept 2020 Print Edition

Sex and Secularism by joan wallach scott princeton, 240 pages, $27.95 While traveling in Spain about twenty years ago, I attended the nearest Ash Wednesday Mass I could find. Upon returning from the communion line, I realized that, aside from the priest, I was the only male present. Catholicism, it . . . . Continue Reading »

The Da Vinci Code All Over Again

From Web Exclusives

Sabar investigated the seller of the artifact—a shady German fellow named Walter Fritz, whose varied exploits and proclivities make the characters in the Da Vinci Code seem downright conventional. A university dropout and part-time pornographer, Fritz managed to fabricate a Gnostic artifact that duped one of the world’s leading experts on early, extra-canonical Christianity, plus enough of her peers to satisfy the Harvard Theological Review. How did this happen? Perhaps the appeal of Gnosticism, for a certain type of scholar, made this artifact too good to check. Continue Reading »

An Interview with René Girard

From Web Exclusives

René Girard is one of the most important Christian intellectuals of our time. Beginning with the publication of Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (1961), Girard’s thought began making waves in a number of disciplines. His first work impacted literary criticism with a basic and revolutionary . . . . Continue Reading »