On the morning of March 23, 1982, a group of young Guatemalan army officers brought a retired army general, Efrain Rios Montt, to power in a coup d’etat. Rios Montt, an evangelical Protestant and member of the Word Church, was president of a Catholic country in Catholic Latin America. The . . . . Continue Reading »
Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry by Alasdair MacIntyre University of Notre Dame Press, 241 pages, $24.95 Over the course of the last five years or so the quality of philosophical inquiry into both ethical and religious matters has increased significantly. Martha Nussbaum’s The . . . . Continue Reading »
As every schoolchild knows, Christopher Columbus, a Genoese navigator, discovered America in 1492. Or perhaps it would be better to say that every schoolchild used to think these were the facts about the European arrival in these lands. For several years now, a chorus of voices (growing larger and . . . . Continue Reading »
January 30, 1991 Dear Richard, Your column in the Wall Street Journal (January 23, 1991), “Just War and This War,” came just in time for me. I have been thinking hard, as you can imagine, about what a pacifist does in war. The article—well done as usual—has provoked me to . . . . Continue Reading »
If the Vanderbilt transition from Methodist to neuter exhibits a typical pattern of academic secularization, what we will find at the root of these events is a sponsoring church that is nonchalant about its burden: one that wishes to be the patron of a college or university without being its . . . . Continue Reading »
Half a mile, not more, separates 50th Street and Park Avenue in central Manhattan from the northwest corner of 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue. But the two points mark the antipodes of New York City’s axis of religious dedication: to timelessness at one pole, to change at the other. On the 50th . . . . Continue Reading »
The expression of art—the exploration of figurative and abstract thought in tangible external forms—is unique to human beings. Even as we think in words, we imagine in the “language” of images. Art is one of the great facilitators of human dialogue, and it provides us as well with . . . . Continue Reading »
Exploring the influence of televangelism on American religion in his book The Struggle for America’s Soul, Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow presents a typical, though hypothetical, case study: Mabel Miller. Mabel lives alone, thousands of miles from her family. She grew up in a . . . . Continue Reading »
Christianity is an inherently missionary faith. According to the Gospel of Matthew, the last word of the resurrected Lord to his disciples was this: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to . . . . Continue Reading »
Surveys provide additional evidence that Americans are returning to “traditional values.” Traditional values is usually a synonym for common sense or moral platitudes. Such sense is common and such morality is platitudinous because they are powerfully confirmed and reconfirmed by human . . . . Continue Reading »
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