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A Visit to Cumorah, Hill of the Mormons

From Web Exclusives

They had evidently not read Stanley Hauerwas. There were perhaps no actual American flags in the visitor’s center—and anyway, this wasn’t a sanctuary—but even so, it’s hard to imagine a more American aesthetic. The brand was boardroom Christianity: well-manicured lawns; well-dressed staff; the whole place conference room clean. “Successful” was mentioned several times, for children, for careers, never in a way that would imply the cross (the martyrs, etc.) as a success. The sculpture of the resurrected Christ was a copy, apparently in plaster, of a nineteenth century Danish marble: that great highpoint of assimilated Christianity, made infamous by Kierkegaard, in its new world simulacrum. Continue Reading »

God and the Gaps

From the April 2013 Print Edition

Most often the story is told like this: There is some feature of the world that science is at a loss to explain. Christians rush to claim that this feature can only be explained by God. Science later produces probable non-theistic hypotheses, and the Christians must beat a hasty retreat. In the . . . . Continue Reading »

The Beauty of the Ethical

From the April 2011 Print Edition

How, then, shall he be a god, who has not as yet been made a man? —St. Irenaeus Malcolm Muggeridge entitled his reflection on Mother Teresa Something Beautiful for God. Perhaps the force of that expression does not immediately strike us, but consider how curious a statement it is: that here . . . . Continue Reading »