I posted the letter to the Financial Times where a college professor from India decried monotheism and declared the benevolent goodness of polytheism and its modern ally, secularism. The letter struck me as provocative and worth mentioning in its own right.But now I think I see a . . . . Continue Reading »
A colleague offered me the following piece of correspondence from the Financial Times. It is a letter written by Dr. Gautam Pingle, who serves as a dean with the College of India. He writes:Sir,[unimportant first para deleted] Intolerance bred by the monotheism of the People of the Book . . . . Continue Reading »
Gene Fant opened this conversation up, so I’ll dive in.I think it is interesting that anyone, such as the person Dr. Fant refers to, could think that the federal government can effectively solve the problem of poverty. I don’t think it can because it resolutely refuses to confront . . . . Continue Reading »
A culture must believe in its own enculturating responsibility and mission. This a post-Christian Europe cannot . . . . Continue Reading »
As with most academic traditions, and especially those that are viewed as soft, there are orthodoxies and fashions, and sometimes sudden turns, that are conventionally described—following Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions of almost half a century ago—as paradigm . . . . Continue Reading »
Just now, as Islamic nations wrestle both with new theoretical ideas and new public policies concerning religious liberty, there may be an opportune moment for reviewing how crucial religious liberty is for democracy. There are rival theories about this. Atheists in Europe have their own approach . . . . Continue Reading »
Now that researchers at George Washington University Medical Center have split human embryos, thereby producing genetically identical twin embryos, cloning human beings is on the table for national debate. Reactions to the event at George Washington have been varied. Some people (the Vatican, . . . . Continue Reading »
The source of the advertisement above is not P. G. Wodehouse, nor Anthony Trollope, nor even Mark Pattison. It appeared in the Cambridge University Reporter—in 1973. The eleven essays assembled by George Marsden and Bradley Longfield on the demise of university patronage of religion in . . . . Continue Reading »
Like millions of other Americans we cringed more than once at the God-talk of Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, and others at the Republican convention and in the subsequent campaign. President Bush was little better with his public complaint that the Democratic platform omitted “three simple letters: . . . . Continue Reading »
On June 24, 1992 the Supreme Court handed down Lee v. Weisman, a decision that declares officially sponsored prayer at the graduation exercises of government schools to be unconstitutional. The following article is the previously unpublished text of an address given by Father John Courtney . . . . Continue Reading »
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