The relationship of church and state is one of the vexing issues of our time. It’s been a vexing issue for a while, in fact. This seems especially true in the United States, a nation that combines a lot of fervent religiousity with a constitution intended to freeze religious authority out of the government. Many fervently religious people don’t see the harm in using government to spread and enforce their beliefs. They consider separation of church and state oppressive. But... Read more
Let’s talk about “spiritual but not religious.” Certainly you are free to call yourself that, but to me the classification comes with some red flags. For example, in the universe of social media memes there is a large sub-genre I’ve come to call “religion drools, spirituality rules” that claims the superiority of spirituality over religion. Spiritual people, according to memes, are smarter, more open minded, more inclusive, more compassionate, more virtuous, and possibly better looking than religious people. Well, okay,... Read more
The Great Disappointment is the name given to a time when the world as we know it didn’t end. Tens of thousands of people fervently believed the date the world would change was October 22, 1844. They sincerely thought on that day Jesus would come in glory to gather the faithful to heaven before cleansing the world of sin. Many of them even gave away all their wordly possessions, donned white robes, and waited on hilltops — or in trees... Read more
The recent solar eclipse visible in North America inspired much social media commentary about the Rapture. And what is the Rapture? Most commonly it’s the belief that some day faithful Christians, both living and dead, will arise in the air to go to Paradise to be with Jesus. The unfaithful will be left on the earth to suffer the Great Tribulation, a time in which evil will spread and the Antichrist will rule. There are other proposed scenarios, including one... Read more
“Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” The famous encounter between journalist Henry Morton Stanley and missionary David Livingstone in 1871 is the stuff of legend. It’s also the stuff of at least a couple of films (Stanley and Livingstone, 1939, starring Spencer Tracy as Stanley; and Forbidden Territory: Stanley’s Search for Livingstone, 1997, starring Aidan Quinn as Stanley and Nigel Hawthorne as Livingstone). And it was the stuff of a Muppets skit starring Bert and Ernie. And a 1968 pop song by... Read more
The empress Wu Zetian (624-705) was one of China’s greatest rulers. She is also known by the name Wu Zhao and a few others. Wu Zetian was the only woman to rule China directly, in her own name. This is particularly remarkable considering she began her imperial career as a 17th-rank concubine. Her rule saw the early years of what is remembered as a golden age in China, when China’s culture and economy bloomed. She elevated the status of Buddhism... Read more
How close is the new Shogun miniseries (not to be confused with the old one from 1980) to the real history of 17th-century Japan? This historical drama, streaming on Hulu, is set in a pivotal moment of Japanese history that I’ve written about recently, a tragic chapter in the history of Christianity in Asia. Episode one begins by announcing that the year is 1600. What was significant about 1600? This was fifty-one years after the first Christian missionary, the Jesuit... Read more
One of the most iconic images of the 20th century is the photograph of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk burning himself to death on the streets of Saigon. The monk was named Thích Quảng Duc, and he died of self-immolation on June 11, 1963 at about the age of 66. But why? Self-immolation as a form of protest is in the news after a U.S. Air Force enlisted man livestreamed his self-immolation. He killed himself in front of the Israeli embassy... Read more
The recent consternation about frozen zygotes, in vitro fertilization and “fertilized egg personhood” laws made me think of the American Zen teacher Robert Aitken (1917-2010), who said a lot of wise things. In Aitken’s book The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics (North Point Press, 1982), he wrote, “The absolute position, when isolated, omits human details completely. Doctrines, including Buddhism, are meant to be used. Beware of them taking life of their own, for then they use us.”... Read more
By “peak Jesus” I mean that there may be a limit to how much Christianity the world’s population will ever absorb, and we’ve reached it. Indeed, the peak may be over and the decline begun. I could be wrong, of course. And I do not intend disrespect to either Jesus or Christianity. But let’s look at some trends. For some time Europe has been called “post Christian.” This is because Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion of Europe.... Read more
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