An Interview with Randall Balmer, Part Four: The Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Catch up on part one, part two, and part three of our interview with Professor Balmer. A conversation between Paul Courtright of Emory University and Randall Balmer of Dartmouth College on his new book, Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter. Balmer talks about how Carter’s religious formation in the American evangelical tradition informed his early character and later political ambitions that took him to […]
Truth from the Trenches and Religions
I. Ludwig Wittgenstein responded to the outbreak of World War I by joining the Austrian Army as an artillery corpsman. Twenty years later, he abandoned teaching at Cambridge University to enlist as a hospital orderly, while his colleagues (some of them) toiled at desks in British Intelligence. In his twenties, he was true to his […]
Secularity and Secularism, Islam and Muslims: A Conversation between Daniel Martin Varisco and Hasan Azad
Hasan Azad: Do Muslims belong in the West? This is a question that is being asked with increasing force in Euro-America. Central to the way in which this discourse is being constructed are discussions about secularism. I’m interested in exploring notions of secularity and secularism and how such ideas—as they are articulated within a Euro-American […]
Religion and Rasslin’
Dan Mathewson brings us a short video documenting the story of George South and his blending of evangelical Chrsitianity and professional wrestling. Read Dan’s recent article about South as well as his earlier piece on religious representations in wrestling.
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, […]
If You See Shirdi Sai Baba’s Face on This Wall, Don’t Worry . . . It’s Normal
Jonathan Loar I. The miracle in Mississauga Last month, the face of Shirdi Sai Baba (d. 1918)—a holy man who lived about 150 years ago in the small village of Shirdi in what is today the state of Maharashtra in western India—appeared on the wall of Sai Dham Canada in Mississauga, Ontario. According to the […]
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 […]