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Briefly Noted

In The People’s Justice, Judge Amul Thapar adroitly assumes the role of storyteller to defend an influential and controversial jurist’s reputation. He recounts twelve prominent cases that have come before Justice Clarence Thomas during his thirty-two-year term on the Supreme Court. The book . . . . Continue Reading »

Christian Urbanism

Cities have figured prominently in the Christian imagination: City of God, City of Jerusalem, the Heavenly City. The single English word “city” has varied referents that easily blur our vision. But the image has lodged itself firmly into our religious politics. The “secular city” (a phrase . . . . Continue Reading »

A Jewish Theology of Resurrection

Does Judaism need a theology of Christianity? The usual answer is no: Whereas without Jews and Judaism there is no Jesus—both historically and theologically—the reverse does not hold. And yet some major Jewish thinkers have attempted to sketch such a theology. The great medieval . . . . Continue Reading »

From Religion to Politics

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 »

Tarkovsky’s Sublime Terror

Andrei rublev, the masterpiece of the great Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, opens with a failed attempt to conquer God. A man attached to a hot-air balloon floats to the upper domes of an imposing church, the tallest structure that a mob of fifteenth-century monks and peasants will ever see in . . . . Continue Reading »

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