Eusebius and the Global War on Christians
Jason Bruner & Ryan Linde Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world. This is a bold—and, perhaps to some, counterintuitive—statement, made most substantively by the renowned Catholic journalist John Allen Jr. in his recent book, The Global War on Christians. But Allen is by no means alone in making the claim. From the […]
Sacred Spinebusters, Transcendent Toe Holds, Part Two: The Confluence of Religion and Professional Wrestling
By Dan Mathewson Ask any wrestling aficionado about the greatest wrestlers from the last quarter century and one name you will consistently hear is “The Heartbreak Kid” Shawn Michaels, the wrestler discussed at the very end of part one of my series on the intersection of religion and professional wrestling. With the charisma of The Rock, […]
Hell Is Coming Here: Cthulhu Cosmology in Hellboy
David McConeghy In the four issues of the Dark Horse Comics mini-series Hellboy: Seed of Destruction (1994), readers meet the titular demon Hellboy, who arrived in the world thanks to a Nazi “Doomsday” ritual led by Russian occult figure Grigori Rasputin. If this sounds familiar, you may have caught the popular 2004 movie adaptation directed by Guillermo […]
Meditations on Death, Presence, and Practice
By Sienna Craig According to Tibetan tradition, when we die we enter into the bardo, a liminal realm between death and rebirth. For the forty-nine days after our body returns to the elements from whence it arose—earth, air, water, fire, and space—our consciousness migrates from this lifetime toward another reincarnation. Those who have not died—family, […]
The Limits of Science and the Dangers of Scientism: An Interview with Curtis White
“Revolutionary tools will reveal how thought and emotion arise,” proclaims a recent cover of Scientific American, trumpeting the current Century of the Brain. Wrong, says Curtis White in his recent book The Science Delusion—a clear and sharp response to Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. What is true? In my interview here with White, we explore this question, the limits of science […]
Jesus Christ Movie Star: A Brief History of Religion and Cinema
By S. Brent Plate In the beginning was the Jesus film . . . The birth of cinema dates from the Lumière brother’s first public screening for a paying audience in a Paris café in December 1895. The following decade saw at least a half-dozen filmed versions of the life and passion of Jesus Christ […]
Religion is Dead; Long Live . . . the Sacred
Gary Laderman I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s the end of Religion as we know it. And I do feel fine. Bring on the “nones,” the SBNRs (Spiritual But Not Religious for those of you not up to speed), the so-called atheists, freethinkers, humanists, secularists, and the anything goes Unitarians. Religion as we thought […]
Religion, Nationalism, and “Ancestral Homelands”
By Shalom Goldman In June of 2001, George W. Bush famously claimed that he had looked into the eyes of Vladimir Putin and “found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy, and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul.” This month, after Putin’s speech on the Russian […]
Noah: An Unrighteous Man
By Jacob L. Wright The editors of Sacred Matters appreciated my comments on the film Noah in the video above, and they asked me to set it in context for their readers. What is included in this clip is just a short section of a much longer interview. I don’t offer a review of […]
The Bible in Comics: Genesis
By Beth Davies-Stofka, PhD The Bible was written on scrolls, papyri, and parchment and rendered in languages ancient or dead. For some religious people, it would seem an act of disrespect, if not sacrilege, to translate its stories and lessons into pictures. Yet down the centuries, countless believers have eagerly translated the Bible into art, […]