So they “got him.” As someone who is trying to live by the Gospel of Jesus and the Dharma of Buddha, should I join the general dancing in the streets and jubilation in the media? I can’t. Yes, I feel a sense of relief – relief that a source of suffering and of violence is [...]
Posts Tagged ‘violence’
A Breakfast Conversation with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
I had the privilege of being present for a breakfast conversation with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Imam at the center of the storm swirling around Park51 – the proposed Muslim Center near Ground Zero. The conversation was sponsored by, and took place at, the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Our breakfast gathering [...]
Muhammad on South Park – Ouch!
What would a Buddhist Christian American make of South Park’s portrayal of Muhammad in its April 14, 200th episode? Was it imprudent? Impudent? Or was it something you would just expect from the always irreverent, usually tasteless (at least for an old fuddy-dud like me), and sometimes embarrassingly funny fare that producers Trey Parker and [...]
Rethinking Military Spending
Can we argue the ethics of the military from an economic standpoint? David McCandless’s data visualizations point out some difficulties in that line of thinking.
Obama and the Middle Way
In the March 8 issue of The Nation, Katha Pollitt concludes an excellent article with: “What is the point of Obama being conciliatory and careful if his opponents are reckless and don’t want to conciliate.” (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100308/pollitt). I’m sure many of us resonate with what Pollitt is urging: Get tough, Mr. Obama! All your reconciliation stuff [...]
Religious Violence
A comment on the rise of religious violence and terrorism that seems to make a lot of sense to me: “The secular world has to have enough justice in it for one not to have to constantly invoke God’s justice against the injustice of the profane.” That’s from Aijaz Ahmad. To which Tony Eagleton adds: [...]
Cage Match Christology
On February 1, the New York Times reported on an apparently growing segment of the nondenominational Christian world: mixed martial arts bouts. This is not to say that they’ve noticed very muscly men with Christian tattoos climbing into the ring. Rather, this is the story of how some congregations are using mixed martial arts (MMA) [...]
A Priest or A Soldier
The re-boot of the early 1980s TV show “V” has caused me to ponder the role of ordained ministers in violent conflict and the singularity of homo sapiens as special creations of God.
Fort Hood
I was away at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting when news came through to Montreal that a United States soldier had opened fire on his fellows at Fort Hood in Texas. The initial media coverage was predictably scattered. Reports were coming in too fast to parse: the shooter was dead, the shooter wasn’t [...]