Is not the past large enough to let you find some place where you may disport yourself without becoming ridiculous? —Nietzsche It is nothing new for poets, painters, and philosophers to harken back to Utopian “golden ages” when greatness or harmony flourished. The German Romantics . . . . Continue Reading »
Every one shall consider the main End of his life and studies, to know God and Jesus Christ which is Eternal life. John xvii.3.—Laws, Liberties, and Orders of Harvard College, circa 1646 As for the Universities, I believe it may be said. Their Light is now become Darkness, Darkness that may be . . . . Continue Reading »
The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York by jim sleeperw. w. norton, 345 pages, $21.95 Most Americans have the sense that something went terribly wrong in the nation’s big cities sometime in the middle of the 1960s. Since then, urban areas have been perceived . . . . Continue Reading »
The Democratization of American Christianity by nathan hatch yale university press, 312 pages, $25 In 1802 a flamboyant Baptist preacher named John Leland presented a twelve-hundred pound “mammoth cheese” to Thomas Jefferson at a White House ceremony. Molded in a cider press from the milk of . . . . Continue Reading »
News stories of recent months underscore the fact that the place of Martin Luther King, Jr. in our national mythology is still not secure. Perhaps that should not surprise us. Myth-making in a nation so large and various as ours takes time. In that light, the twenty-three years since Dr. King’s . . . . Continue Reading »
As a geographer, I learned years ago that my fellow countrymen are not only uninformed about the location of places and things; they are uninterested and, indeed, resentful when someone suggests that it might be helpful for them to know where in the world they are. It took last year’s budget . . . . Continue Reading »
It was in the early 1960s that my late revered teacher, Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel, became the first major Jewish theologian in America to enter into dialogue with Christian theologians on a high theological level. Once during that time, when I was part of a small group of students who . . . . Continue Reading »
For most people in America, all those not familiar with the complicated ideological positioning on the right end of the political spectrum, the term “conservative” evokes images of the board room, the country club, and the Episcopal church located not far from the latter. In other words, the . . . . Continue Reading »
Who has been handing out these permission slips?” asks a writer of our acquaintance. He wants to know who determined that it is alright again to tell racist jokes in polite society, or to publish columns suggesting, none too gingerly, that Jews have excessive influence in American life. Who . . . . Continue Reading »
Authority is an issue that occupies a central place in current ecumenical discussion among the churches and it is one of enormous social and political importance as well. Accordingly, while the arguments that follow are directed most particularly to the question of authority in the churches, they . . . . Continue Reading »
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