December 2012
America’s Most Influential Journal of Religion and Public Life
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England’s Repressive Tolerance
Carrying a placard which read, “Jesus Gives Peace, Jesus is Alive, Stop Immorality, Stop Homosexuality, Stop Lesbianism,…
Letters
Reason and Revelation There is a deep divide between Jonathan Rauch’s belief that marriage is a malleable…
Drop the Mic
Catholic clergy and laity seem to accept the use of microphones at Mass without question as something…
God and the Mad Hatter
Materialism, being a fairly coarse superstition, tends to render its adherents susceptible to a great many utterly…
Careless Consumerism
When the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, relieved supporters happily looked forward to implementing the…
Chance, by Design
Christians who accept Darwinian evolution are, it is sometimes said, trying to have it both ways. If…
The New Secular Moral Majority
A recent report from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life tells us that…
The Orthodox Renaissance
At the beginning of the twentieth century, those Westerners who knew about the Orthodox Church tended to…
A Tale of Two Thomases
Consider this description of one of “America’s Byways”: “Traversing the lush hills and farmlands of southern Indiana,…
The Case for Educational Pluralism
Public education means different things in different countries. In the United States, it means government-funded and government-delivered…
Ivy Reveries
College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be by Andrew Delbanco Princeton, 240 pages, $24.95 Books warning…
Briefly Noted
Martin Luther’s Anti-Semitism: Against His Better Judgment by Eric W. Gritsch Eerdmans, 172 pages, $25 Eric Gritsch,…
Homo Immolans
On Sacrifice by Moshe Halbertal Princeton, 152 pages, $24.95 Moshe Halbertal, a professor of Jewish thought at…
Just Kidding
Why Have Children? The Ethical Debate by Christine Overall MIT, 272 pages, $27.95 This book, like my…
Conflict Resolution
Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism by Alvin Plantinga Oxford, 376 pages, $27.95 “Naturalism”…
Quaker Meeting, Late Winter
I watch the dust motes dance, be tossed on eddies in the sun-streak in its minute advance…
Bored to Death
As Paul’s words droned on like the furry buzz of bees, I unfolded off the floor, crammed myself…
Instructions for Climbing and Descending
Good foot goes to heaven; bad foot goes to hell. When every step torments and pain is…
My Mother’s Smile
Her hair still hardly touched with grey, and wound in gleaming braids around her head, my mother,…
Christmas Caroling in Colonial Williamsburg
Many of those here only know a verse of any given carol, sometimes less— sometimes an isolated…
Bah!
Mired deep in winter solstice cold and gloom, Craving festivities aglow with cheer, We lose our heads…
The Births of Aphrodite and Athena
The one swirled out of foam, the other mind; The one disturbs the fish, like bright, lost…
The Stocking Feeder
The stocking feeder was an instant hit: Birds came as soon as I suspended it Above the…
