Matthew Engelke is right: religion is about mediation. Ironically so, because it is about the divine; but because the divine…
Culture, nature, and mediation
Book blog
Scholars from varying disciplines engage in critical discussions of recent books. Additionally, scholars introduce their books with an original essay or, occasionally, an original essay reviews an important new book, connecting it to other threads of conversation in the academy and beyond.
You can read our very first book forum, on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and the continued discussion around Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age here.
Truth in conflict
My previous post argued that anyone who wishes both to think well and to feel well about the world should…
Crosswise logic
My previous post sought to humble the principle of non-contradiction, and thus the logic of consistency it defines, finding it inadequate for…
Blinded by the light, or, Why can’t liberals see?
Where a century ago liberal Christians (and even some anthropologists) were citing Marx and Bergson in the hope of transforming…
Immortal mortal
The first of the four posts in this series argued that if we seek a philosophy that encourages us to love this…
Disenchantment and the mind-dependence of the moral
At the core of contemporary secularism is the denial of the existence of deities and the supernatural. There is only…
History and the historyless
Buried in the middle of William James’s chapter on “The Sick Soul” in The Varieties of Religious Experience is the…
What is Oprah?: An interview with Kathryn Lofton
In Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon, just out from University of California Press, Yale religion professor Kathryn Lofton orchestrates…
Seeing disciplines
In the midst of the interdisciplinary enterprise that Global Christianity, Global Critique undertakes, I want to suggest that the challenge…
Falling on the sword of the spirit
There is no doubt that anthropology needs new approaches for understanding dramatic change, a new way of figuring the relationship…