Religion & Philosophy:

Odd Gods
There are a lot of small, new religions in the United States, and it seems that more pop up all the time. What are they and what do they want? Why are people attracted to them? Perhaps more importantly, how are we as individuals and as a society supposed to react to these new religious groups? Read More...

Sacred Pain
For most people, pain is something to be avoided: it is a sign that something is wrong and that something needs to be fixed. But for a few people, at least some times, pain is something sought after. There are even religious reasons to seek pain and discomfort. But why would people do this? Are they insane, or do they know something the rest of us don't? Read More...

The Quest for the Historical Muhammad
Who was the "historical" Muhammad? This may seem like an odd question, since there is a common assumption that Muhammad's life was something that happened "in" history. What that means is that it is something known through reliable, verified historical sources and that we can describe what happened with little or no interference from accumulated myths. Read More...

The God Experiment
Are science and religion compatible, or are they so different that they must ultimately come into conflict, with people having to choose one or the other? Some believe that they are not only compatible, but that they ultimately support each other - with the new revelations of science demonstrating the deeper truths of religion while the insights of religion point the way for science to proceed. Read More...

Ultimate Journey
In 629, the Chinese Buddhist monk Hsuan Tsang left the Tang dynasty capital Chang-an (current-day Xian) and traveled to India to see the main shrines of his religion. His path was difficult, taking him across deserts and mountains. His record of the 15-year-long voyage not only served generations of travelers, but also generations of scholars and school children until, eventually, it ended up largely forgotten. Read More...

Give Me That Online Religion
Religion is developing an increasing presence online, there is no question about that. But what does this development mean for religion and for the online world? That question isn't so easy to answer, but Barbara Brasher does explore the matter and attempts to give us an ideas of where the answer might lie. Read More...

The New Buddhism
Buddhism has become very popular in the West over the past couple of decades, but to what degree has Buddhism been changing the West, and to what degree has Buddhism itself undergone change? According to William Coleman, Buddhism has changed a lot, yet nevertheless, it is fundamentally the same as it has always been. But how can this be? Read More...

The Vanquished Gods
For Tertullian, writing in the early 3rd century, the question was "What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?" The implied answer was that Athens and Jerusalem had nothing relevant in common, and therefore that the dominant philosophies of Greek culture had no interest or application for Christian faith. The same question, and mirror answer, occupy Richard H. Schlagel's new book. Read More...

The Splendid Feast of Reason
What is the value of reason and rationality, and how are rationalists to live in a persistently irrational world? These are the two main questions which Singer addresses in his book The Splendid Feast of Reason. They may not seem to be closely related, but as Singer argues, there are many benefits to be had from rationality in society, even if only a minority of people practice it. Read More...

The Religion of Paul the Apostle
Was Paul a shaman? This is a very interesting and unusual question, and the issues it raises lie at the center of John Ashton's penetrating new look at the origins of Christianity and religious experiences of Paul the Apostle. Read More...

Being Good
With all of the cultural and religious challenges which face us today, is there still any way to think and act ethically? That's a very good question, and Simon Backburn's newest book is designed to give people an introduction on what ethics are, the different ways which people can approach ethics, and finally why ethics really matter to us. Read More...

Fire and Roses
The United States of America likes to pride itself on its religious tolerance; although that is often true, such assumptions should not be made in a context of historical ignorance. It has been a long road to get to where we are, and a long road lies ahead of us yet. Nancy Schultz brings to life one particularly violent and hateful stop along our historical path: the attack on and burning of a convent of Ursuline nuns in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Read More...

The Yellow Cross
During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church worked vigorously to suppress any challenges to its authority, both inside and outside Europe. One of the victims of those efforts was Catharism, an offshoot of Christianity which preached a doctrine of peace and love. Differing from orthodox Christianity on a number of important points, they were targeted by the Inquisition for elimination. Read More...

Francis of Assisi: A Revolutionary Life
Another biography of Francis of Assisi? So many have already been written, what is the point of another one - and why would it be of any interest to skeptics and nonbelievers? Unlike most who write biographies of St. Francis, Adrian House deliberately writes both for religious and irreligious people. St. Francis was among the least dogmatic of Saints, and did more to try and live by Christian ideals than anyone else; his life thus serves as a counter-point to what Christians today actually do. Read More...

Papal Sin: The Structures of Deceit
There was a time when Catholics knew that their popes were human and very capable of sinning - even egregiously. But Catholics also had faith in the institution of their Church to eventually overcome the problems of any one person. Today, however, a cult of personality has developed around the current pope, and the independent authority of institutions has eroded. Even worse, past errors are being covered up (or worse yet, perpetuated) in order to protect the image of the Church as never doing serious wrong. Garry Wills exposes all of this, bringing it to the harsh light of day. Read More...

Constantine's Sword
That Christianity has a legacy of antisemitism is undeniable. That Christianity, and in particular the Catholic Church, has a legacy of suppression of dissent and unorthodox ideas is also undeniable. What is interesting, however, are the ways in which both of these legacies are not only related, but are in fact dependent upon each other. By ranging over the entire history of Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church, James Carroll describes how the Church has worked to preserve power both through the suppression of internal (unorthodox) dissent and external (Jewish) dissent. Read More...

Merely Mortal?
What happens when we die? Is that the end for us - the end of experience, the end of living? Or is it rather correct to say that somehow, something of us survives - that we "live" on in some fashion and do not really encounter a final or total end of ourselves? This is the central question in Antony Flew's most recent work, tackling the issue from a strictly philosophical perspective which will be welcome to some, but a bit difficult for others to follow. Read More...

Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost its Way
In recent years, there has been a plethora of writings about "lost" gospels - documents of early Christian communities which are supposed to offer an alternative perspective on the nature of Christianity and, perhaps, the nature of Jesus. But do these "lost" gospels really offer us anything? Do they tell us anything about the earliest years of Christianity, or does their popularity instead tell us more about ourselves? Read More...

The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus
Who was Jesus? Innumerable people - scholars and lay people alike - have wanted to answer that question and have therefore embarked upon a "quest for the historical Jesus." What has been the result of their efforts? According to Charlotte Allen, not very much. Allen argues that these "quests" reveal much more about the psychology and ideology of the questors and little or nothing about Jesus. Read More...

The Transformation of American Religion
Religion in America has been changing over the past few decades - and the change is one which reflects similar changes in previous centuries. Earlier changes were called "Great Awakenings" - mass movements of people reaching radical new understandings of their religion, their spirituality, and the place religion had in their lives. According to Porterfield, that is what is happening again. Read More...

Rage Against the Veil
What is it like to live as a woman in a strict Islamic society? Or better yet, what is it like to live in such a society when you are a well-educated, talented, politically active, and self-assured woman who knows what she wants in life? It's tough to imagine such a situation, but Parvin Darabi tells the story of one such person: her sister. Unfortunately, her sister is unable to tell us herself because she committed suicide by burning herself to death in Tehran. What drove her to such an act of desperation? Read More...

The Messiah Before Jesus
Was Jesus really an innovative figure in Judaism, or was he instead the inheritor of a previously established belief system about the nature of the role of a Messiah? Traditional Christian opinions have ranged widely on this issue, with some saying that Jesus claimed a unique Messiah role, and others arguing that this was only claimed later by the Christian community, because it was totally unknown in Judaism. Knohl, however, argues that such a figure was not only known, but was filled by others before Jesus. He was not the first, and perhaps did not expect to be the last Messiah. Read More...

The First Messiah
About 100 years before the probable lifetime of Jesus, a man came to Jerusalem who eventually came to be called "The Teacher of Righteousness." Given the name Judah by author Michael O. Wise, this all-but-forgotten preacher and prophet prefigured the stories surrounding Jesus in a startling number of ways. Equally messianic figures, they both were were arrested and condemned by authorities due to their religious claims. Read More...

Lying Awake
If you thought that you were receiving visions from God, but learned that they may be caused by an easily repairable brain problem, what would you do? This is the dilemma facing Sister John of the Cross, a middle-aged nun living a cloistered life in a Carmelite monastary. Read More...

Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching
What role and influence did Christian women have in 17th and 18th century America? Most people's answer to this question would be heavily colored by the image of Puritan women, who practiced a religion which idealized female submission to men in both this world and the next. These were not, however, the only Christian women in America - there were also many Quaker women, and they lead dramatically different lives. Read More...

The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark
Dennis MacDonald's argument is one which is novel and will surely anger biblical traditionalists and literalists: namely, that the gospel of Mark was written as a conscious and deliberate imitation of the stories in the Homeric epics. The goal was to give readers a familiar context to discover the superiority of Christ and Christianity over pagan gods and beliefs. Read More...

Islamic Mysticism: A Secular Perspective
Islam so often seems like a harsh religion dominated by rigid rules, unpleasant severity and unthinking - even fanatical - beliefs. So why are many Westerners attracted to it? What is appealing about Islam, and are people justified in being drawn to it? Ibn Al-Rawandi takes a closer look at this phenomenon and explains it from his own personal and secular perspective. Read More...

Salvation: Scenes from the Life of St. Francis
Novelist Valerie Martin describes the life of St. Francis of Assisi by using short, vivid scenes rather than traditional narration. Martin, who is not Catholic, not particularly religious, and not a believer in miracles tells an interesting story with real ramifications for Christianity - just as did the life of St. Francis himself. Read More...

The Happy Heretic
Why do people see images of the Virgin Mary in their food, like waffles? Why do people pray - and why don't they do other, equally effective things, like rubbing a small stuffed animal? Why has Mother Teresa been so popularity - and does that popularity have anything to do with the reality of the things she did? Read More...

Why Atheism?
So, why would anyone be an atheist? Why would any question the existence of a supernatural deity, something believed in by a large percentage of people in society. Is there any reasonable basis for atheism and such skepticism - and, if so, what is it? Read More...

Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt
What is the "Bible Belt" and how did it originate? Why is it that the location of the most conservative strains of Christianity moved from New England down to the South? Much has been written about Southern evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity in America, some of it positive and some of it negative. But not a lot has been written about its very earliest origins - how a mostly Anglican region based upon money and commerce was converted to the Baptist and Methodist denominations. Read More...

Minimalists vs. Maximalists
This isn't actually a book, but a magazine. Normally very conservative in its presentations, the recent edition of Biblical Archeology Review (March/April) presents two sides in an interesting and important debeate about biblical history. On the one side are the maximalists, researchers who argue that the bible is an accurate and informative guide to the history and culture of ancient Israel. On the other side are the minimalists, recent scholars who argue that the bible is actually a record of what later generations mythologized about their history. Read More...

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