Faiths and Worldviews
Items on religions, ideologies, philosophies, and other ways people interpret the world
Dealing with Extremists in Islam
Thu 26 Jul 2007 • Responses: 66 • by Luder G. Whitlock, Jr.
A withdrawal of Western troops from Iraq will not assure that conflict will end.
The relationship between the West and Islam will be one of the most important issues during the first part of the twenty-first century. It has enormous implications not only for the Middle East, but for Europe with its growing Muslim population. The growth of a militant, violently ruthless Islam endangers not only the West, but the world.
A Theology of Safeway
Wed 18 Jul 2007 • Responses: 2 • by Micah Mattix
A book with theory and case studies on a fresh way to understand and engage the culture we live in.
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Charles A. Anderson, and Michael J. Sleasman, Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends, Baker Academic, March 2007. 288 pages, $24.
What do the contents of the Safeway checkout line tell us about our culture’s definition of that long-standing Socratic notion, “the good life”? What do Eminem’s sometimes bombastic rap songs tell us about current notions of despair and redemption? How does one relate these definitions to the ones found in the Scriptures? More importantly, why should one bother?
The Atheist Onslaught
Fri 25 May 2007 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
David Aikman considers the “new atheists” and new prospects for civility from unexpected sources.
An interesting publishing and cultural phenomenon has been afoot in the U.S. since the fall of 2006. To a degree unprecedented in recent publishing history, to my knowledge, at least four books by self-described atheists, all of them militantly attacking religious belief, have made it to The New York Times best-seller list and sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
Confessions of an Agenda
Thu 24 May 2007 • Responses: 6 • by Al Sikes
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that “People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.” Al Sikes looks at the confession made by the editors of the New York Times in their treatment of Christopher Hitchens’ new book attacking religion.
At the top of the page: “The New York Times Book Review, May 13, 2007.”
Just underneath “Book Review” was a large black ashtray that consumed almost half of the tabloid-size page. Inside the ashtray were a cross, a Star of David, and Islam’s crescent, all formed by cigarette butts. And below the ashtray was the bold headline: “In God, Distrust.” The headline introduced a Michael Kinsley review of Christopher Hitchens’ book, God Is Not Great—How Religion Poisons Everything.
Guroian on Speaking of Faith
Fri 06 Apr 2007 by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow Vigen Guroian is featured on the Good Friday edition of Public Radio’s Speaking of Faith.
The program is entitled “Restoring the Senses: Life, Gardening, and an Orthodox Easter” Topics touch on history, theology, liturgy, gardening, and literature—including the Chronicles of Narnia.
“Theologian Vigen Guroian experiences Easter as ‘a call to our senses.’ We’ll explore his Eastern Orthodox sensibility that is at once more mystical and more earthy than the Christianity dominant in Western culture. And at this time of year and beyond, Vigen Guroian does real theology in his garden as richly as in church.”
The program’s website includes audio (MP3, streaming, and podcast) as well as selected excerpts from Dr. Guroian’s writings and other resources. It will make a good meditation on this Good Friday and Easter weekend and includes some wonderful music.
What’s Left of Secularization?
Thu 15 Mar 2007 by William Edgar
Social scientists are telling a different story today about the role of faith in public life
Senior Fellow William Edgar looks at the traditional story Western social scientists have been telling about the inevitable decline of religion in public life—and the way this view has been challenged over the past few years.
Faith in the Creator God in Ancient China?
Wed 07 Mar 2007 • Responses: 6 • by David Aikman
Faith of Our Fathers: God in Ancient China, by Chan Kei Thong with Charlene L. Fu, Beijing: Dong Fang Publishing House/China Publishing Group, 327 pp., ISBN 7801865065, $23.10 (This book may be purchased through the authors’ website)
Two and a half centuries ago a stormy dispute surged through the Christian world about the nature of China’s culture. In Rome, the Catholic Church was deeply divided over the nature of Chinese culture. Did the ancient Chinese, long before they encountered Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam, have an understanding of God in a monotheistic sense as creator and sustainer of the universe? The Jesuits, who had an intellectually brilliant and profound impact on China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thought they did. So, two centuries later, did Rev. James Legge, translator of the Chinese classics into English and a deep admirer of Confucius. But in the eighteenth century, Dominican and Franciscan opponents of the Jesuits, who distrusted the confident Jesuit influence within the Chinese imperial court, disagreed noisily. Ancient Chinese beliefs, they said, were so many pagan superstitions, and needed to be discarded by prospective Chinese converts to Catholicism. Legge’s opponents took the same position, and were only partially deflected in their opposition to his views because the Scottish clergyman was so brilliant that he became Oxford University’s first professor of Chinese.
Beyond Moral Bewilderment
Tue 06 Feb 2007 • Responses: 1 • by Dallas Willard
Where is Moral Knowledge?
Senior Fellow Dallas Willard says that moral knowledge is no longer readily available to most people in the normal course of our lives. He shows why this has happened and explains by contrast how the enduring influence of Jesus on the world is due to his sound, intelligent, and testable answers to the basic questions of human life. His life and teaching is real knowledge, by which we can and should live.
What to Make of China?
Fri 02 Feb 2007 • Responses: 1 • by Richard W. Ohman
Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power by David Aikman (Second edition, Regnery Publishing, December 2006), 336 pages. ISBN 1596980257
China—what to make of it? Response to this question will undoubtedly consume an ever-increasing amount of time, energy, and analysis as our new century unfolds. The context for discussing this question is becoming clear and involves at least three major themes: economic potential, political rigidity, and the nation’s soul. David Aikman’s book, Jesus in Beijing, just released in a new edition, addresses the least-discussed of these today—the nation’s soul—which may well be the most important in answering the questions about China and its future.
The Paradox of the Pursuit of Happiness
Fri 15 Dec 2006 • Responses: 1 • by Wilfred M. McClay
In today’s culture, not only are you unhappy, your unhappiness is your own fault.
It’s almost impossible to speak about “happiness” in a general way without sounding like a child, or a cynic, or more likely a purveyor of tired and shallow truisms. The problem is that while happiness is a subject of central importance to our existence, and a matter of irrepressibly consuming interest, many of the most reliable truths about it may easily come across as disappointingly flat and trite and commonplace. But there is one maxim that is the exception to this rule: Happiness is a matter of having the right expectations.
Because of this, ideas have everything to do with happiness. The pattern of expectations to which the pursuit of happiness conforms itself at any given time—that age’s vision of feasible felicity, so to speak, and the means one uses to reach it—is itself a product of the dominant ideas of the time in question: ideas about life, death, God, nature, causality, moral responsibility, and human possibility. In a word, what we believe about the world’s structure and meaning will determine what we think happiness is, and how we can act to gain it for ourselves. What we believe provides the basic structure of what we expect.
