Beginning with a distinction between African American religions and African American religious life, Professor Glaude explains how black religious life and thought have historically entered public discourse to mediate matters of race and justice.
Eddie Glaude on Race and The American Soul: Part 1
To Let Live and Make Die: Human Ethics and Moral Machines
Sylvester Johnson In this new, present age of intelligent machines, religious studies experts especially will be faced with a paradigm shift. They have approached problems of ethics and morality by assuming that moral communities are exclusively constituted by communities of biological humans.
Seven Questions for Ted Smith
The deepest roots of this book, Weird John Brown, are in my attempts to think about how to live as a white man in a United States that is so deeply disfigured by slavery and its legacies.
An Interview with Frans de Waal Part 3: Science & Religion
This is part 3 of our series of interviews with Frans de Waal. Check out part 1 and part 2 of our interview series. Frans de Waal is an eminent primatologist renowned not only for his many publications in scientific journals, but also for several widely read books, including Chimpanzee Politics and, more recently, The Bonobo and the Atheist. In the latter work, Professor de Waal explores how non-human primates, even in the absence of anything we might call “religion,” have a profound capacity for empathy and social cohesion in a way that may serve as a basis for morality in the case of humans. Speaking […]
An Interview with Frans de Waal Part 2: Freud, Biology of Morality, and a Secular Ethics
This is part 2 of our series of interviews with Frans de Waal. Check out part 1 of our interview here. Frans de Waal is an eminent primatologist renowned not only for his many publications in scientific journals, but also for several widely read books, including Chimpanzee Politics and, more recently, The Bonobo and the Atheist. In the latter work, Professor de Waal explores how non-human primates, even in the absence of anything we might call “religion,” have a profound capacity for empathy and social cohesion in a way that may serve as a basis for morality in the case of humans. Speaking with […]
Halal Hysteria and Secularity
By Hasan Azad Do Muslims belong in the West? This is the real question behind the recent halal hysteria in Britain. This is also the question behind previous—and, no doubt, future—questions about the headscarf (hijab), about the face veil (niqab), about Muslim men, about Muslim women, about Muslims and homosexuality (which is prohibited according to Islamic law), and about Muslims and violence. But staying with the issue of Muslims and animals—or, more specifically, how Muslims slaughter animals—the argument being made by a portion of the British media is that the halal method of slaughter (by slitting the animal’s throat while […]