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Category Archives: United States
Stubborn Amish and Stubborn Atheists
One of my earliest memories is of an incident in the kindergarten of my childhood in Vienna. I must have been at most five years old. I was supposed to speak a line in a play about which I have … Continue reading
Posted in Freedom, Modernity, United States
25 Comments
Movements
We are awash in movements. The Arab Spring is one long series of movements, like a row of candles, each one igniting the next one in the row—Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, then back to Benghazi, and so on across the Middle … Continue reading
Posted in Europe, Politics, United States
14 Comments
Christians and the Death Penalty
The cross has been the foremost symbol of Christianity for so long that we easily forget that it was an instrument of execution. Subjects of the Roman Empire at the time could hardly forget this, and the spectacle of a … Continue reading
Posted in Catholicism, Christianity, United States
17 Comments
Veils and Beards
Leila Ahmed, who teaches at the Harvard Divinity School, is the author of a recently published book, A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America. She tells a very interesting story. Ahmed originally comes from a … Continue reading
Posted in Islam, Modernity, United States
6 Comments
Christian Scientism
The Texas State Board of Education has been a recurring locale of what is conventionally understood as the battle between science and religion. The agency has the power to decide which textbooks are to be used in Texas public schools. … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Evangelicalism, Secularism, Sociology, United States
14 Comments
A Quick Note to My Readers
I would like to inform the readers of this blog that there will be a lunchtime roundtable on the occasion of the release my new book, Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist: How to Explain the World Without Becoming a Bore, … Continue reading
Posted in United States
2 Comments
What is the West? And Where Is It?
For some decades now there has been a debate over the alleged Western bias of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the multitude of activities that have emanated from it. The debate has typically focused on the priority of … Continue reading
Posted in Freedom, Secularism, The West, United States
6 Comments
Virginity, Polyamory and the Limits of Pluralism
The German news magazine Der Spiegel, in its issue of January 3, 2011, has two separate stories that become more intriguing if one reads them together. (In a recent post I noted that I have finally discovered my mission in … Continue reading
Posted in Christianity, Europe, Islam, Secularism, United States
28 Comments
Jewish Identity in America
I occasionally pick up The Jerusalem Post at the famous out-of-town newspaper kiosk on Harvard Square (for ongoing news about the Middle East I rely on its very informative sister publication The Jerusalem Report). In the current international edition my … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Judaism, United States
8 Comments
In Defense of a Commercialized Christmas
Many retail stores depend on Christmas shopping for their survival. Economists tell us that the current uptick of this seasonal shopping is good news for the recovery from the recession. Christian clergy and secular culture critics tend to have a … Continue reading
Posted in Christianity, Culture, Europe, United States
5 Comments
