A number of recent studies have attempted to analyze the emergent and fast-growing segment of American society that declines any…
Religious “nones” and the future of American religion
spirituality
The new gurus
In last week’s New York Times Sunday Styles section, Allen Salkin reported on the emergence of a “new wave” of…
Religion for radicals: An interview with Terry Eagleton
Literary critic Terry Eagleton discusses his new book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, which argues that…
The Oprahfication of Obama
First, you need a name. Not just any name. A weird name: a Biblical misspelling, maybe, or an invocation of…
Heraclitean spirituality: divine conflict
From the vertiginous summit of his virtue, and against all evidence to the contrary, Heraclitus informs us that "it is…
Always put one in the brain
Let me assure you. Ongoing neurological studies will not dramatically change religious belief or practice. As Robert Bellah notes in…
Psychoanalysis as spirituality
What are our moral and spiritual sources? In his magnificent and magnanimous recent book, A Secular Age, Charles Taylor investigates…
Let’s get clear about materialism
David Brooks's op-ed, "The Neural Buddhists," is premised on a variety of conceptual confusions that are worth trying to clear…
A religious history of American neuroscience
Not long ago, researchers wired up the atheist Richard Dawkins with a helmet that would create magnetic fields partially simulating…
Belief, spirituality and time
Charles Taylor, in his magisterial book on the Secular, periodically engages a constituency he calls immanent materialists. I would like…