We All Make Our Own Paper Tigers: Amy Chua and Why ‘Culture’ Doesn’t Displace ‘Race’ the Way You Think It Does
Too often when we talk about ethnic “culture” in America, we’re really just talking about race and pretending we’re not.
Category: Religion
America’s Tiger Mom and the Totally Valid, Not At All Biased, Really Scientific Practice of Ranking America’s Cultures and Races
Famed Tiger-Mom Amy Chua’s new book helpfully lets its readers know which cultures and races in America are superior, and which are inferior.
Why Poverty?
There are a lot of good causes out there. Why focus on poverty? For Poverty Awareness Month.
Ugly Duck Things
If you guessed that what’s going on here isn’t exactly about Christianity, I’m in agreement with you.
Miracles of Great Silence: Christmas, Francis, Right and Left
A Christmas message concerning Pope Francis, political tribalism, and the coming year.
Toxic Relationships
Masses of people agreeing to vote for officials who want to go to war, continue using the death penalty, and tend to oppose programs that would support the poor all so those officials will do little more than pay lip service to the virtue of female chastity surely isn’t the ideal arrangement for a democracy.
The Stress of Left Regard
We’ve all heard about right wing backlash against Pope Francis. But what about backlash from the left?
In Which I Lead Astray
Kyle Cupp explains why he doesn’t worry about leading others astray when he writes critically or questioningly about religion.
The “Feminized” Jesus
Lieutenant General William G. “Jerry” Boykin, now with the Family Research Council, wants to be like the Jesus who was a “man’s man,” who had “big, bulging biceps” and “smelled bad.” Nothing is stopping...
Cultural Kelvin
Awash in the reek of my own community’s orgy of modernity, I found Tim Stanley’s ablution most welcome: In the words of Joe Orton, “Cleanse my heart … let me rage correctly.” So what...
Deconstructing Religious Authority
Religious authority ultimately requires not only trust in the office of authority, but also in the specific individuals who hold that office.
A leisurely Sunday afternoon riot
After we returned from an early dinner with friends late Sunday afternoon, we began to hear the reports of disturbances a few blocks away from where we live in downtown Huntington Beach. The annual...
FNC: Where a Muslim is Just a Muslim
Reza Aslan, author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus Christ, pushes back against FNC’s Lauren Green’s assertions that it was somehow inappropriate for a Muslim to write a book about the founder...
The End of Absolute Sexual Morality
My friend Darwin observes: When trying to make-nice to conservatives, proponents of “same sex marriage” tend to emphasize it as a way of enshrining commitment and sexual morality. However, while this tends to suggest...
The Development of Sex, Marriage, and Nature in Christian Thought
“To have intercourse without intending children is to violate nature, which we must take as our teacher.” – Clement of Alexandria Throughout many traditions of Christian thought, theologians have taken nature, by which they’ve...
Nepotism!
The charming and insightful Darlene McLeod was recently published in Geez, asking a few questions:
Being in Uncertainty
Claire Creffield, an atheist who finds that, sometimes, “invoking the concept of God seems a very compelling way indeed of doing justice to the strangeness, the beauty and the peril of our lives,” asks...
Visiting Heaven
Eban Alexander has journeyed to heaven and returned to tell the tale. In addition to writing an upcoming book, he chose to publish his private revelation in the pages of Newsweek. He’s a neurosurgeon,...
Human Sexuality and Religious Norms
Decades after the sexual revolution, many religious conservatives remain fiercely committed to preaching, if not always living, an absolute and absolutist understanding of human sexuality. Mainstream biologists, psychologists and sociologists, building on the science...
