Makoto Fujimura— As I write from the desk overlooking my Princeton farm, Bluebirds and Tree Swallows have begun to nest. The peeper frogs have serenaded our evening walks. The spring thaw gives us hope, at least a pause, in our intense and dark pandemic world. And in the scarce winter of
Anthony T. Kronman— I can now see that my anxious wish to master my world in thought has from the start been a longing to understand its relation to eternity, but without a God of the sort to whom Christians, Jews and Muslims pray. This is an intellectual longing, of
Gabriel Said Reynolds— Heaven and hell are important notions to the Qur’an, the scripture of Islam. The divine voice of the Qur’an assures its audience that those who are faithful and do good will enter into paradise, which it names janna (related to Hebrew gan, meaning “garden”) and firdaws (from
David Bentley Hart— There is, it seems, a very strict etiquette of hell. I don’t mean the manners and mores proper to the establishment itself; I expect those are pretty dreadful, if you’re the fastidious sort. Rather, I mean a set of unwritten rules one is supposed to observe when
Bryn Geffert and Theofanis G. Stavrou— Although the New Testament uses the terms “priest” and “bishop” interchangeably, the early church quickly distinguished between the two. Priests acted as advisers and teachers. Bishops led Christian communities and “celebrated” (administered) the Eucharist—“Communion” or “the last supper”—that is, the ceremony that Jesus instructed
Few thinkers, let alone theologians, have managed to inspire the popular imagination as Paul Tillich did in the mid-twentieth century. As a public intellectual, he has been compared to Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose writings also gained mass appeal and whose lectures attracted large audiences in the 19th century. One of
A recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life indicates that the number of people claiming no religious affiliation is on the rise. In response, Richard Dawkins, the British evolutionary theorist and critic of religion, has stated he is “optimistic” about this trend. For Dawkins and cohorts
As we consider 2012 as a whole, following closely on last month’s discussions on political economy, religion may have assumed a more central role in global culture—conflicts and revolutions, apocalyptic predictions, elections, scientific discoveries—despite an increasing insistence on secularist thought throughout much of the world. In addition to Yale University