Twenty years ago, Salman Rushdie wrote a novel so shocking that it nearly cost him his life. Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s Supreme Leader, issued a fatwa against the Indian author on account of the blasphemy in his book, The Satanic Verses . Much to the chagrin of the more extreme elements of the . . . . Continue Reading »
American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile . I really like the title of the book I’m writing, in the hope of having it ready for publication in the first part of 2009. That can be a problem in writing books. You fall in love with a title and then labor to build a book around it. But I’m . . . . Continue Reading »
Abortion was made for horror. In abortion, a mother is pitted against her child, the Madonna becomes Medea; and the child, usually a symbol of innocence, is experienced as an invading enemy. The distortions of the pregnant woman’s body are mirrored in the dismemberment of the fetus, and the . . . . Continue Reading »
Three memories have shaped my approach to this year’s general election.Here’s the first. In the late 1970s, during a two-year break from teaching to raise our second son, an adopted child, I found myself at a Los Angeles dinner party filled with DINKs, the “double income, no . . . . Continue Reading »
I have been reflecting here on the ways in which, also for Christians, and maybe especially for Christians, being American is part of our inescapable identity. These reflections will, God willing, be part of a forthcoming book, American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile .Thought that is real and . . . . Continue Reading »
Every once in a while I come across a perfect book¯not perfect in the sense of flawless or deep or indispensable, but perfect in the sense of being richly representative of an era or ethos or sensibility. Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom is perfect in this way. Uncomplicated, accessible, . . . . Continue Reading »
Deep ecology, a movement launched by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in 1972, may be contrasted to an environmentalism concerned with the depletion of resources and pollution. For one thing, deep ecology aims at nothing less than a fundamental change in religion, morality, and social . . . . Continue Reading »
As the hot days of summer draw to a close, I find myself possessed of a full inventory of images. I certainly knew about the recent fashion of tattooing. But in the summer season of exposed skin, I found myself surprised by how widespread it has become.A morning under an umbrella on the patio of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Collecting, naming, and organizing things¯anything, from banana labels to dachshund paperweights¯seems to be built into human nature. At least, that’s what the Bible tells us. The first task God gave Adam was the naming of the animals. God “brought them to Adam to see what he . . . . Continue Reading »
Joseph Pearce’s reply is as overheated and inaccurate as his book. I shall gladly leave it to your readers to determine whether there is anything of a “shrill personal attack” or ad hominem argument in my review, or whether those appellations better describe Pearce, who preens himself . . . . Continue Reading »
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