Paul J. Griffiths

Paul J. Griffiths The response of American Catholic intellectuals to the events of September 11 and their aftermath has been profoundly disappointing to anyone looking for some genuinely Catholic thinking. Most of what’s been written and said by Catholic chatterers on left and right is . . . . Continue Reading »

Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought By Pascal Boyer Basic. 375 pp. $27.50 Pascal Boyer claims, as his book’s title proclaims, to have explained religion. What he means, in fact, is that he has explained it away. In making his claim, he enters his name in a long . . . . Continue Reading »

In the February issue First Things published the Erasmus Lecture of 2000, “Papacy and Power,” by George Weigel. The monumental political influence of the pontificate of John Paul II, Weigel argued, is the result of a long and complicated history in which the papacy has successfully contended . . . . Continue Reading »

The study of religion as an academic discipline is now close to a century and a half old. In the United States, at least, it appears to be flourishing. There are scores of university departments devoted to it, several hundred doctoral degrees earned in it each year, a professional organization (the . . . . Continue Reading »

It is of course the case that only God knows what will happen in the next century and the next millennium. But we human beings are created with an irrepressible disposition toward the future, as well as a capacity to recall the past. In the last year we published a “millennium series” of . . . . Continue Reading »

Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia By Russell T. McCutcheon Oxford University Press 249 pp. $32 The academic study of religion is in something of a theoretical muddle at the moment. In its early days it defined itself mostly by contrast with . . . . Continue Reading »

Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of the World’s Beliefs By Ninian Smart. University of California Press, 331 pages, $29.95. The modern study of religion is about a century old. It has a longer lineage, of course: Hume’s Natural History of Religion and Spinoza’s Tractatus . . . . Continue Reading »

God’s Chinese Son: The Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan By Jonathon D. Spence Norton, 400 pages, $27.50 China in the first half of the nineteenth century faced unusually complex problems. The ruling Qing (Manchu) dynasty was weak and internally divided. Trade contacts with the West were . . . . Continue Reading »

Salvations:Truth and Difference in Religion by s. mark heim orbis, 248 pages, $19.95 Christians have always been interested in the fact that there are many faithful practitioners of religions other than Christianity. Some are ignorant of Christianity; others prefer to remain non-Christian even when . . . . Continue Reading »

Is Christianity True? by Hugo A. Meynell University of America Press, 149 pages, $24.95 Apologetics-the traditional intellectual exercise of defense of Christian belief against attacks from rivals and the attempt to show the superiority of Christian belief-has seen something of a revival among . . . . Continue Reading »