THE SOUL St Anne’s College, University of Oxford28 June – 1 July 2013 Ever since Descartes, the soul understood as immediate mental consciousness has tended to stand as a last bastion securing religious belief against naturalistic reduction. But today that bastion is under assault from the ‘new atheists’. However, the bastion is proving very hard to storm, with increasing numbers of even atheist thinkers denying that its capture by neuroscience will ever prove possible. Meanwhile, more subtle naturalisms are arguing... Read more

President Obama has tapped Louie Giglio, pastor of Atlanta’s Passion City Church, to deliver the benediction at his inauguration. Think Progress has found, not terribly shockingly, that the 54-year-old Giglio delivered an anti-gay sermon in the 1990s. You can read all the ugly details here. I say not terribly shockingly because even today Passion City describes itself as “conservative and evangelical,” and in the 1990s, this was certainly not unusual, and isn’t even today. I’m not excusing it, I’m just saying... Read more

When President Obama spoke at the memorial service for the children, teachers, and administrators murdered in Newtown, Connecticut, I was overwhelmed by dissonance.  His remarks assumed that a Christian perspective was applicable to everyone who mourned as he spoke about “eternal glory” and quoted bible verses:  “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven not built by human hands.” I empathize with Obama’s reliance... Read more

If the violence of September 11, 2001, accomplished one thing, it was to force the United States, and by proxy the other Western powers who joined its military adventure in the Middle East, to drop the pretense of being secular nations. When one saw some of the most prominent atheists in American discourse calling for crusades against Muslim invaders, the supposed progressivism of our intellectuals—which still regularly and loudly proclaims its superiority to the passions of religion—looked a bit less convincing. Osama bin Laden... Read more

While he officially secured the Republican nomination last March, Mitt Romney’s primary victories in January 2012 all but guaranteed that, for the first time in American history, a Mormon would be nominated to a major party ticket for president. Romney’s nomination also meant that his often misunderstood and maligned Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) would be the stuff of headlines, at least until Election Day. When Mitt Romney gave his concession speech in the late hours of... Read more

I recall years ago on a Sunday when I was on vacation doing what I normally would do at such times: I went to visit another church in the community. This particular church was one of the ten largest in the country. The sprawling campus was perfectly landscaped and the huge building was impressive. My family and I were running late. We rushed from the parking lot, through the doors to their “worship center.” But what I saw stopped me... Read more

In discussing the myth-ritual system of medieval Christianity in his book Myth and the Christian Nation, (2008) Burton Mack notes the following: It was interested only in the church taking its place as the dominant religion in Christian empires and kingdoms. And so, left out of the picture and its applications is the entire range of current human interests in the natural world, the natural sciences, the human sciences, the social sciences, and the issues of social well-being taken up by... Read more

Understanding Frederick Douglass, the great black leader and abolitionist, requires an appreciation of his religious faith. As an atheist friend of his once said: “there was one obstacle to a loving and lasting friendship — namely, the personal Christian God.” For most of his career Douglass believed in a living God who could change the world. “All things are possible with God,” he declared. “I believe in the millennium,” a literal heaven on earth as described in Revelation. Love and... Read more

Marshall Bruce Mathers III is no longer simply a birth name. It is a household name. Marshall Mathers is Eminem’s true, intimate, ultimate and permanent self. In Eminem’s music, we come to know Mathers as Eminem’s spiritual self, the one who explains good and bad behavior and communicates attitudes and morals. Mathers also handles the stresses created by Eminem’s fame and Shady’s controversies as well as his own personal demons. Conspiratorial theories asserting that Mathers is either a Satanist or an... Read more

by Joseph Boston R3 Contributor There has been much critique and controversy surrounding the new Quentin Tarantino movie “Django Unchained”. In particular I keep coming across a consistent critique on the depictions of violence throughout the movie. While cinematic violence is a topic worthy of debate within American cinema I find a certain sense of irony that this critique is being levied on this movie when there are innumerable movies in the cinematic landscape also worthy of such criticism. There are... Read more