Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
This is a collection of pieces by Islamic women living in the United States. Their stories reflect a diversity of experience—from growing up within the tradition-laden strictures of immigrant families, to afro-american women who are children and grandchildren of Nation of Islam founders.
In his book about the emergence of Islam as a global presence, Ali A. Mazrui opens with a question that is apt to raise eyebrows. He begins with the Toynbean theory of challenge and response—in the case of the Roman empire, it failed to find creative responses to the challenge of emergent Christianity.
Can queer theory be used as a tool to think about mental health? This is a question that has nagged me for a few years now, and in the fall, I had an opportunity to write about it for a course on liberation theology.
In my continuing online exchange with Fr John Boyle [a gay-hating priest from Kent], he points out that we use the same mode of analysis. It’s curious how two people using the same approach can arrive at opposite conclusions.
This is a book which should have begun with its epilogue. It is at the end that Marcus Borg makes clear what is at stake for a twenty-first century treatment of the historical Jesus and why it matters.
Is it just that I’m thick? Or is it that no amount of finesse can rescue atonement from the sin of obscurantism? Nevertheless, having a good guide like this lends clarity to the challenge of addressing some of the most problematic strands of thinking in 21st century Christianity.
“Plutoed” is the 2006 Word of the Year, as determined on the afternoon of January 5th, 2007.
This Christmas, more than usual, people have been crying foul over issues of political correctness. The most notable instance of this arose around the decision by Seattle’s Sea–Tac International Airport authority to remove from its premises all Christmas trees and related paraphernalia.
At the end of time, Joe met his worst nightmare. The rapture came & he had to go to the bathroom. With his pants around his ankles, the angels snatched him up. All of him, that is, except … His Left Behind.
With Canada’s federal liberal party leadership race coming to a close today, and a copy of the Booker–nominated novel, Scar Tissue, sitting unread on my book shelf, I decided to sit down yesterday and see for myself what I could learn about Michael Ignatieff.
Not long ago, the topic of vasectomies came up in conversation at a family dinner. I mentioned the dreaded “v” word just to watch my brother’s response—the grimace and the sudden shift in the chair as he drew one leg over the other. My brother and I are, in some ways, vastly different people. And application of the “v” word acts as a kind of litmus test that quickly determines which sort each of us is.
The United Church of Canada has officially launched a media campaign targeting the 30 – 45 demographic. The church is facing the fact that the majority of Canadians (& people everywhere), while regarding themselves as spiritual, no longer see spiritual value in church communities.
It’s time to reevaluate what has been a rather circumspect dance with a progressive christian congregation over the past year. There are times I find myself vehemently disagreeing or else saying: “Your concerns have nothing to do with my experience.”
My dad hired my son to scan all his slides, because nowadays no one ever sets up the projector and screen and bores the dinner guests to tears. Every so often I’d hear laughter, and when I asked Mitchell about it, he’d say: “Just another picture of you.”
How does one read a book whose fundamental premise is its own demise? It feels a bit like visiting an elderly relation in the old folks home. The conversation is at times awkward, at other times nostalgic and entertaining. After all, when someone (or something) has been around for quite a number of years, it…