Showing posts with label my life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label my life. Show all posts
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
Saturday, 29 June 2013
Tuesday, 4 June 2013
Monday, 22 April 2013
There are more than a few resources available to those who would teach on atheism, so long as they conceive of atheism in philosophical terms. There are anthologies, and college course syllabi available online, and a more-or-less established sense of what would be included in such a course.
For those interested in teaching on the history of atheism, this isn't the case.
Personally, I became interested in atheism as a historical phenomena when thinking about how to explain the relationship between the New Atheists and the cultural changes at the turn of the century -- the terrorist attacks of 2001, the election of George W. Bush, and the rise of blogging in particular. While the arguments being advanced by New Atheists were, from the most part, not directly speaking to their political and cultural context, those things seemed relevant nonetheless. They're relevant not necessarily in terms of evaluating the arguments being made, but in terms of understanding why the arguments were what they were, and why they were being made in the ways they were. It seemed, further, that in the atheism debates that sprang up in the first part of the 21st century, atheism was consistently being treated as one thing, a timeless and unchanging philosophy. But when one looks at actually existing atheism, there are always multiple movements and counter-movements and many contested claims about coextensive commitments that come along with atheism.
Atheism, that is to say, is always, in history, atheisms. In the plural, they are, I find, more complex, more fraught, and more alive than they're generally made to seem in popular, public conversations.
Thinking about atheism ahistorically means leaving out a lot of interesting and arguably important aspects of the atheisms that people hold to and live their lives with.
Approaching the subject as history, on the other hand, allows one to focus on at least two important issues. One, what cultural conditions contributed to and determined the shape and tenor of various atheist movements, and two, what effect those movements had and have on the culture. Approaching atheism historically can mean (for example) allowing for the space necessary to think about how different political environments and philosophies were hospitable to different movements of atheists at different times -- why, for example, Republicans in the Gilded Age gladly counted Robert Ingersoll as one of their own, while in the first decades of the 20th century atheists were associated and affiliated with the more radical strains of the politics of the left.
As far as I can tell, the only readily available historical works on atheism tend towards hagiography, or are designed to be dismissive, so that "history" means either "model for moral instruction" or "refutation." Such approaches aren't great, academically. While they may be useful for arguing for atheism or against atheism, they're not helpful in teaching about atheism, which is what I want to do.
I am trying to teach the history of American atheism(s) this semester. I've had to create my own canon, to do that, with a bit of very helpful advice. With the thought that there may be others interested in teaching such a course, or anyway, general interest in approaching atheism as aspect of American history, I offer my course schedule reading list here, along with some explanatory notes.
In selecting the assigned readings, I kept two principals in mind: One, representitiveness; Two, accessibility.
It quickly became evident that it would not be possible to be comprehensive, given limitations of a semester. But I wanted readings that would adequately represent the various movements of atheism in American history, give students a vairly complete overview, and I wanted to have selections that would sufficiently present the particular thinkers and their arguments. Also I wanted readings that would not give my students -- mostly in their first years of university, coming from a wide variety of educational backgrounds, from a number of different disciplines -- too much trouble. Plus I had to be able to get ahold of the given readings and make them available to the students. With those limitations and goals, here's what I came up with:
A few thoughts:
1. It would be very easy to double the number of readings. There are lots and lots of people who are not here and could be here, though hopefully the above gives a good overview even though it's not comprehensive.
2. There were a number of people who I ended up leaving out because their work is limited mainly to criticizing instantiations of Chrisitanity, and they don't generally go beyond that. Examples range from 19th century abolitionists to 21st century media figures. I gave preference to works where epistemological and metaphysical claims are made.
3. If this could be expanded, it would be worth looking at those who were not atheists per se but attempted to establish secular alternatives to traditional religions, such as Felix Addler and John Muir. Such movements will be referenced in discussions of readings that are included, but there are limits on time that forced me to make some tough decisions.
4. With a few noted exceptions, fictional works on atheism were not included. While there would ideally be space for Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, etc., etc., there was a problem of accessibility. In some cases, non fiction versions of the author's arguments are easier to teach. In others, the issue of excerpting a short enough portion of text for a single undergrad class was very problematic. Additionally, teaching fiction is different than teaching argumentative essays, and switching back and forth too much presents a number of challenges.
5. There are only a few secondary texts, here, mostly in the first month of class. The secondary texts I've found tend to be very uneven. The hope, though, is that these texts will demonstrate to the students how one can take a primary text and situate it historically and read it in historical context, which the class will then do with the later texts.
6. Class time will be given to a combination of history lectures and group discussions explicating the assigned readings.
This is obviously a work in progress, but, I hope, a promising one.
For those interested in teaching on the history of atheism, this isn't the case.
Personally, I became interested in atheism as a historical phenomena when thinking about how to explain the relationship between the New Atheists and the cultural changes at the turn of the century -- the terrorist attacks of 2001, the election of George W. Bush, and the rise of blogging in particular. While the arguments being advanced by New Atheists were, from the most part, not directly speaking to their political and cultural context, those things seemed relevant nonetheless. They're relevant not necessarily in terms of evaluating the arguments being made, but in terms of understanding why the arguments were what they were, and why they were being made in the ways they were. It seemed, further, that in the atheism debates that sprang up in the first part of the 21st century, atheism was consistently being treated as one thing, a timeless and unchanging philosophy. But when one looks at actually existing atheism, there are always multiple movements and counter-movements and many contested claims about coextensive commitments that come along with atheism.
Atheism, that is to say, is always, in history, atheisms. In the plural, they are, I find, more complex, more fraught, and more alive than they're generally made to seem in popular, public conversations.
Thinking about atheism ahistorically means leaving out a lot of interesting and arguably important aspects of the atheisms that people hold to and live their lives with.
Approaching the subject as history, on the other hand, allows one to focus on at least two important issues. One, what cultural conditions contributed to and determined the shape and tenor of various atheist movements, and two, what effect those movements had and have on the culture. Approaching atheism historically can mean (for example) allowing for the space necessary to think about how different political environments and philosophies were hospitable to different movements of atheists at different times -- why, for example, Republicans in the Gilded Age gladly counted Robert Ingersoll as one of their own, while in the first decades of the 20th century atheists were associated and affiliated with the more radical strains of the politics of the left.
As far as I can tell, the only readily available historical works on atheism tend towards hagiography, or are designed to be dismissive, so that "history" means either "model for moral instruction" or "refutation." Such approaches aren't great, academically. While they may be useful for arguing for atheism or against atheism, they're not helpful in teaching about atheism, which is what I want to do.
I am trying to teach the history of American atheism(s) this semester. I've had to create my own canon, to do that, with a bit of very helpful advice. With the thought that there may be others interested in teaching such a course, or anyway, general interest in approaching atheism as aspect of American history, I offer my course schedule reading list here, along with some explanatory notes.
In selecting the assigned readings, I kept two principals in mind: One, representitiveness; Two, accessibility.
It quickly became evident that it would not be possible to be comprehensive, given limitations of a semester. But I wanted readings that would adequately represent the various movements of atheism in American history, give students a vairly complete overview, and I wanted to have selections that would sufficiently present the particular thinkers and their arguments. Also I wanted readings that would not give my students -- mostly in their first years of university, coming from a wide variety of educational backgrounds, from a number of different disciplines -- too much trouble. Plus I had to be able to get ahold of the given readings and make them available to the students. With those limitations and goals, here's what I came up with:
15 April
Introduction; syllabus; definitions; review of classic arguments for the existence of God
22 April
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Selections from Age of Reason
Joel Barlow (1754-1812)
Selections from Joel Barlow: American Citizen in a Revolutionary World, by Richard Buel, Jr.
29 April
Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"Centennial Oration"; "Why I am an Agnostic"; selections from The Great Agnostic, by Susan Jacoby
Elizabeth Candy Stanton (1815-1902)
Selections from A Woman's Bible
6 May
Charles Chilton Moore (1837-1906)
Selections from Kentucky's Most Hated Man, by John Sparks
Blue Grass Blade
Selections from Letter from an Atheist Nation, ed. Thomas Lawson
13 May
William Graham Sumner (1840-1910)
"Religion and the Mores"; "That it is Not Wicked to be Rich; Nay, Even That it is Not Wicked to be Richer Than One's Neighbor"; "The Shifting of Responsiblity"; "Sketch of William Graham Sumner," by Albert Galloway Keller; "God and Man at Yale (in 1880)" by George Marsden
20 May
Max Eastman (1883-1969)
"The Religion of Patriotism"
Mike Gold (1894-1967)
"The Jesus-Thinkers"
27 May
H.L. Menken (1880-1956)
Selections from Damn! A Book of Calumny; Scopes trial reporting
3 June: NO CLASS
10 June
Humanist Manifestoes (1933; 1973)
17 June
Richard Wright (1908-1960)
Selections from Black Boy
James Baldwin (1924-1987)
Selections from Go Tell it on a Mountain
24 June
Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
Selections from Atlas Shrugged; Playboy Interview 1964
1 July
Madalyn Murray O’Hair (1919-1995)
Playboy Interview 1965, "The Murder of the Madalyn Murray O'Hair: America's Most Hated Woman," by Lona Manning
8 July
William Hamilton (1924-2012)
"The New Essence of Christianity"
Thomas J.J. Altizer (1927- )
"A Wager"
Make-up class:
Richard Feynman (1918-1988)
"The Relation of Science and Religion"; "Cargo Cult Science"
Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
"Pale Blue Dot"; selections from "The Varieties of Scientific Experience"
15 July
Daniel Dennett (1942- )
"The Bright Stuff"; "Atheism and Evolution"; "The Evolution of Misbelief"
22 July
Chris Stedman (1987- )
Selections from Faitheist
Conclusion; wrap-up
A few thoughts:
1. It would be very easy to double the number of readings. There are lots and lots of people who are not here and could be here, though hopefully the above gives a good overview even though it's not comprehensive.
2. There were a number of people who I ended up leaving out because their work is limited mainly to criticizing instantiations of Chrisitanity, and they don't generally go beyond that. Examples range from 19th century abolitionists to 21st century media figures. I gave preference to works where epistemological and metaphysical claims are made.
3. If this could be expanded, it would be worth looking at those who were not atheists per se but attempted to establish secular alternatives to traditional religions, such as Felix Addler and John Muir. Such movements will be referenced in discussions of readings that are included, but there are limits on time that forced me to make some tough decisions.
4. With a few noted exceptions, fictional works on atheism were not included. While there would ideally be space for Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, etc., etc., there was a problem of accessibility. In some cases, non fiction versions of the author's arguments are easier to teach. In others, the issue of excerpting a short enough portion of text for a single undergrad class was very problematic. Additionally, teaching fiction is different than teaching argumentative essays, and switching back and forth too much presents a number of challenges.
5. There are only a few secondary texts, here, mostly in the first month of class. The secondary texts I've found tend to be very uneven. The hope, though, is that these texts will demonstrate to the students how one can take a primary text and situate it historically and read it in historical context, which the class will then do with the later texts.
6. Class time will be given to a combination of history lectures and group discussions explicating the assigned readings.
This is obviously a work in progress, but, I hope, a promising one.
Sunday, 7 April 2013
On the wall of the bathroom stall at the Wal-Mart where I worked stocking shelves my last year of college, someone had scratched the start of a game of tic-tac-toe. X in the center. O in the upper corner. (The start of a stalemate, a cat's game).
On the wall of a corridor in the hospital in Tübingen where I've been this last week, there are framed portraits of famous people who had diseases. FDR had polio, and look what he did with his life. Gauguin had syphilis, but didn't let it hold him back.
The lesson of the first wall is one I am only slowly unlearning.
The man who put the tic-tac-toe game on the wall probably didn't have health insurance. I certainly didn't have health insurance working at Wal-Mart. My hours were kept below the minimum for full-time employment, the point at which certain labor laws would have kicked in and required benefits. I made 50 cents an hour more than minimum wage, if memory serves. Part of training was a video on what to say if approached by union organizers. One of the benefits that did come with the job, after a few weeks of a paperwork and a probationary period where you could be fired without cause, was an employee discount on groceries. With the money I saved from that I got a tattoo -- a cheap tattoo -- when I quit the job, and graduated college, and moved south to where I met my wife.
I tell people the tattoo is from a book that was really important to me, when they ask. I tell people, sometimes, that it's what the aliens say in this book whenever someone dies. I could also say it's an answer to the set-up for a cat's game, a phrase that's important to me for how it acknowledges and accepts the world as it is, but makes a decision against despair. This was one of the first conversations I had with my wife, though at the time of course she wasn't that yet, and I couldn't yet know how amazing she would be if you fell off your bike in a field and were in excruciating pain and had to go to a German hospital.
She reminded me of this conversation this week as I recovered from surgery to fix my broken shoulder with a metal plate and eight screws. "Thank you," she said, "for not despairing."
When I broke my shoulder, I was in the middle of a field, on a path with an unfortunate rut in it where my bike slipped and I flipped onto my shoulder. I had to walk to a nearby landmark where a taxi would pick me up. It took about a hour, because of the pain. Every step jostled the three fractures where my arm no longer lined up with my shoulder. I kept walking, though, and got there, and the taxi came, and we went to the hospital. This would not have always been the case. When I signed into the hospital left-handed, and did the necessary bureaucratic form-filling, I wasn't overwhelmed by it. Even though I am basically always overwhelmed by even the most benign bureaucracies. Just the thought of bureaucracy is normally enough to fill me with shaky dread, a frantic certainty that such institutions loom with secrets and rules to hurt me. I didn't think about the cat's game, though, the lesson of the X and the O already where they are. I signed wrong-handed, shaky and uneven, and then signed the next thing, and focused only on what was next.
I walked around the hospital a little, waiting for the surgery, on pain meds and with my arm safe in a sling. That's how I found the wall of pictures of people who had had bad stuff happen to them but were okay anyway. The person who put that on the wall probably had health insurance. Which I do too now. It's a very different kind of a lesson, on this wall. One that's hard for me. That may be why the message was so unsubtle: stuff goes wrong sometimes, but it's okay.
The writer Kurt Vonnegut once wrote of someone in one of his books, "she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her."
As I replace the bandages over my sutures, that sew up the two surgical incisions now perpendicular to my tattoo, I know how that feels. It feels pretty good.
Like things are going to be okay.
On the wall of a corridor in the hospital in Tübingen where I've been this last week, there are framed portraits of famous people who had diseases. FDR had polio, and look what he did with his life. Gauguin had syphilis, but didn't let it hold him back.
The lesson of the first wall is one I am only slowly unlearning.
The man who put the tic-tac-toe game on the wall probably didn't have health insurance. I certainly didn't have health insurance working at Wal-Mart. My hours were kept below the minimum for full-time employment, the point at which certain labor laws would have kicked in and required benefits. I made 50 cents an hour more than minimum wage, if memory serves. Part of training was a video on what to say if approached by union organizers. One of the benefits that did come with the job, after a few weeks of a paperwork and a probationary period where you could be fired without cause, was an employee discount on groceries. With the money I saved from that I got a tattoo -- a cheap tattoo -- when I quit the job, and graduated college, and moved south to where I met my wife.
I tell people the tattoo is from a book that was really important to me, when they ask. I tell people, sometimes, that it's what the aliens say in this book whenever someone dies. I could also say it's an answer to the set-up for a cat's game, a phrase that's important to me for how it acknowledges and accepts the world as it is, but makes a decision against despair. This was one of the first conversations I had with my wife, though at the time of course she wasn't that yet, and I couldn't yet know how amazing she would be if you fell off your bike in a field and were in excruciating pain and had to go to a German hospital.
She reminded me of this conversation this week as I recovered from surgery to fix my broken shoulder with a metal plate and eight screws. "Thank you," she said, "for not despairing."
When I broke my shoulder, I was in the middle of a field, on a path with an unfortunate rut in it where my bike slipped and I flipped onto my shoulder. I had to walk to a nearby landmark where a taxi would pick me up. It took about a hour, because of the pain. Every step jostled the three fractures where my arm no longer lined up with my shoulder. I kept walking, though, and got there, and the taxi came, and we went to the hospital. This would not have always been the case. When I signed into the hospital left-handed, and did the necessary bureaucratic form-filling, I wasn't overwhelmed by it. Even though I am basically always overwhelmed by even the most benign bureaucracies. Just the thought of bureaucracy is normally enough to fill me with shaky dread, a frantic certainty that such institutions loom with secrets and rules to hurt me. I didn't think about the cat's game, though, the lesson of the X and the O already where they are. I signed wrong-handed, shaky and uneven, and then signed the next thing, and focused only on what was next.
I walked around the hospital a little, waiting for the surgery, on pain meds and with my arm safe in a sling. That's how I found the wall of pictures of people who had had bad stuff happen to them but were okay anyway. The person who put that on the wall probably had health insurance. Which I do too now. It's a very different kind of a lesson, on this wall. One that's hard for me. That may be why the message was so unsubtle: stuff goes wrong sometimes, but it's okay.
The writer Kurt Vonnegut once wrote of someone in one of his books, "she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her."
As I replace the bandages over my sutures, that sew up the two surgical incisions now perpendicular to my tattoo, I know how that feels. It feels pretty good.
Like things are going to be okay.
Thursday, 21 March 2013
Tuesday, 5 March 2013
Sunday, 10 February 2013
Wohl dem, des Hilfe der Gott Jakobs ist; des Hoffnung auf den HERRN, seinem Gott, steht; der Himmel, Erde, Meer und alles, was darinnen ist, gemacht hat; der Glauben hält ewiglich; der Recht schafft denen, so Gewalt leiden; der die Hungrigen speist. Der HERR löst die Gefangenen. Der HERR macht die Blinden sehend. Der HERR richtet auf, die niedergeschlagen sind. Der HERR liebt die Gerechten.
Der HERR behütet die Fremdlinge und erhält die Waisen und Witwen und kehrt zurück den Weg der Gottlosen.
-- Psalm 146, Luther Bible, 1545
Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God: Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever: Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The Lord looseth the prisoners: The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind: the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down: the Lord loveth the righteous:
The Lord preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.
-- Psalm 146, King James Version
Der HERR behütet die Fremdlinge und erhält die Waisen und Witwen und kehrt zurück den Weg der Gottlosen.
-- Psalm 146, Luther Bible, 1545
Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God: Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever: Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The Lord looseth the prisoners: The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind: the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down: the Lord loveth the righteous:
The Lord preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.
-- Psalm 146, King James Version
Tuesday, 1 January 2013
1 The Essential Alan Watts, by Alan Watts
2 Grandfather, by Tom Brown, Jr
3 The Visitation, by Frank Peretti
4 They Speak with Other Tongues, by John L. Sherrill
5 The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis
6 After Theory, by Terry Eagleton
7 Comfort and Joy: A Study of the Heidelberg Catechism, by Andrew Kuyvenhouen
8 Living the Heidelberg: The Heidelberg Catechism and the Moral Life, by Allen Verhey
9 Dutch Calvinism in Modern America, by James D. Bratt
10 Green River Killer, by Jeff Jensen & Jonathan Case
11 The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800, by Lucien Febvre & Henri-Jean Maritan
12 Wittgenstein's Mistress, by David Markson
13 Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition, by James K.A. Smith
14 A History of the Evangelical and Reformed Church, by David Dunn et al.
15 Divided by a Common Heritage, by Corwin Smith et al.
16 The Eastern Church in the Spiritual Marketplace: American Conversions to Orthodox Christianity, by Amy Slagle
17 Marx: A Very Short Introduction, by Peter Singer
18 For Marx, by Louis Althusser
19 A Contract with God, by Will Eisner
20 Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America , by Matthew Avery Sutton 21 Beginning Theroy, by Peter Barry
22 Chuck Smith Autobiography: A Memoir of Grace, by Chuck Smith
23 Frank Bartleman's Azusa Street, ed. Roberts Liardon
24 The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South, by Randall J. Stephens
25 A Feast of Snakes, by Harry Crews
26 Culture and Materialism, by Raymond Williams
27 Introducing Derrida, by Jeff Collins and Bill Mayblin
28 The Book of Mormon Girl, by Joanna Brooks
29 Expect a Miracle, by Oral Roberts
30 Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans, by Albert J. Raboteau
31 Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Men and Angels, by William J. Samarin
32 Fields White Unto Harvest, by James R. Goff, Jr.
33 Nine O'clock in the Morning, by Dennis J. Bennett
34 Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson
35 The Fugitive Blacksmith, by James W.C. Pennington
36 The Drop, by Michael Connelly
37 Watching Dallas, by Ien Ang
38 Awkwardness, by Adam Kotsko
39 Why We Love Sociopaths, by Adam Kotsko
40 The Dawn Patrol, by Don Winslow
41 Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, by Slavoj Žižek
42 The Supernatural Ways of Royalty, by Kris Vallotton and Bill Johnson
43 Prayer is Invading the Impossible, by Jack Hayford
44 The Devil All the Time, by Donald Ray Pollack
45 What is Cultural History, by Peter Burke
46 Canada, by Richard Ford
47 Without God, Without Creed, by James Turner
48 Communication and the Evolution of Society, by Jürgen Habermas
49 Buddha in Blue Jeans, by Tai Sheridan
50 Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, by D.T. Max
51 Manual of Zen Buddhism, by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki
52 Through the Fire, by Shawn Grady
53 Mind and Cosmos, by Thomas Nagel
54 The New Atheist Novel, by Authur Bradley and Andrew Tate
55 The Communist Hypothesis, by Alain Badiou
56 The Assassination of Jessee James by the Coward Robert Ford, by Ron Hansen
57 Fun Home, by Allison Bechdel
58 An Awareness of What is Missing, by Jürgen Habermas, et al.
59 The Word in the World, by Candy Gunther Brown
60 California, by Jennifer Denrow
61 American Exorcism, by Michael W. Cuneo
62 The Walking Dead, Book One, by Robert Kirkman
63 Knox's Irregulars, by J. Wesley Bush
64 VALIS, by Philip K. Dick
65 Karl Marx, by Francis Wheen
66 Modern Social Imaginaries, by Charles Taylor
2 Grandfather, by Tom Brown, Jr
3 The Visitation, by Frank Peretti
4 They Speak with Other Tongues, by John L. Sherrill
5 The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis
6 After Theory, by Terry Eagleton
7 Comfort and Joy: A Study of the Heidelberg Catechism, by Andrew Kuyvenhouen
8 Living the Heidelberg: The Heidelberg Catechism and the Moral Life, by Allen Verhey
9 Dutch Calvinism in Modern America, by James D. Bratt
10 Green River Killer, by Jeff Jensen & Jonathan Case
11 The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800, by Lucien Febvre & Henri-Jean Maritan
12 Wittgenstein's Mistress, by David Markson
13 Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition, by James K.A. Smith
14 A History of the Evangelical and Reformed Church, by David Dunn et al.
15 Divided by a Common Heritage, by Corwin Smith et al.
16 The Eastern Church in the Spiritual Marketplace: American Conversions to Orthodox Christianity, by Amy Slagle
17 Marx: A Very Short Introduction, by Peter Singer
18 For Marx, by Louis Althusser
19 A Contract with God, by Will Eisner
20 Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America , by Matthew Avery Sutton 21 Beginning Theroy, by Peter Barry
22 Chuck Smith Autobiography: A Memoir of Grace, by Chuck Smith
23 Frank Bartleman's Azusa Street, ed. Roberts Liardon
24 The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South, by Randall J. Stephens
25 A Feast of Snakes, by Harry Crews
26 Culture and Materialism, by Raymond Williams
27 Introducing Derrida, by Jeff Collins and Bill Mayblin
28 The Book of Mormon Girl, by Joanna Brooks
29 Expect a Miracle, by Oral Roberts
30 Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans, by Albert J. Raboteau
31 Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Men and Angels, by William J. Samarin
32 Fields White Unto Harvest, by James R. Goff, Jr.
33 Nine O'clock in the Morning, by Dennis J. Bennett
34 Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson
35 The Fugitive Blacksmith, by James W.C. Pennington
36 The Drop, by Michael Connelly
37 Watching Dallas, by Ien Ang
38 Awkwardness, by Adam Kotsko
39 Why We Love Sociopaths, by Adam Kotsko
40 The Dawn Patrol, by Don Winslow
41 Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, by Slavoj Žižek
42 The Supernatural Ways of Royalty, by Kris Vallotton and Bill Johnson
43 Prayer is Invading the Impossible, by Jack Hayford
44 The Devil All the Time, by Donald Ray Pollack
45 What is Cultural History, by Peter Burke
46 Canada, by Richard Ford
47 Without God, Without Creed, by James Turner
48 Communication and the Evolution of Society, by Jürgen Habermas
49 Buddha in Blue Jeans, by Tai Sheridan
50 Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, by D.T. Max
51 Manual of Zen Buddhism, by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki
52 Through the Fire, by Shawn Grady
53 Mind and Cosmos, by Thomas Nagel
54 The New Atheist Novel, by Authur Bradley and Andrew Tate
55 The Communist Hypothesis, by Alain Badiou
56 The Assassination of Jessee James by the Coward Robert Ford, by Ron Hansen
57 Fun Home, by Allison Bechdel
58 An Awareness of What is Missing, by Jürgen Habermas, et al.
59 The Word in the World, by Candy Gunther Brown
60 California, by Jennifer Denrow
61 American Exorcism, by Michael W. Cuneo
62 The Walking Dead, Book One, by Robert Kirkman
63 Knox's Irregulars, by J. Wesley Bush
64 VALIS, by Philip K. Dick
65 Karl Marx, by Francis Wheen
66 Modern Social Imaginaries, by Charles Taylor
Monday, 31 December 2012
If [Joel] Barlow was America's first atheist, he was tentative about it. "Flirtation," [James] Turner's term, seems to be accurate. He came to his unbelief privately, in the context of his reading and his private notebooks, and he kept it private too. It's significant, nonetheless, that he did go so far as to disbelieve, even if only cautiously. It was, in his notebooks, a crazy thought. And not one without consequences. Barlow hesitated, in the face of those consequences, but still might be rightly understood as marking an early moment in a significant societal shift.
Barlow's private unbelief, as possibly America's first atheist, is an important moment in that move Charles Taylor describes as "a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood as one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace," the shift from a society in which "it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believes, is one possibility among others."
In this sense, Barlow is significant to late 18th, early 19th century America. There may have been a historical moment, there, where in the privacy of his notebooks Barlow was the only American anywhere who thought of himself as rejecting all conceptions of God. Where he was the one who thought what was almost unthinkable, that there is no God, and thought it even to the point of tentatively, privately, accepting for himself what to most was an insult, a slur, the name "atheist."5. On the meaningfulness of books bought, but not read
Even if one does, eventually, read all the books one owns -- itself a dubious proposition -- there's a delay, a lag. There's no easy, simple link between buying a book and reading it. There's no simple formula by which one could predict readership based solely on sales.
If this seems obvious, it should. Yet, without fail, cultural critics act as though there's no difference between book purchase and book reading, as if measuring the one were measuring the other. As if the one always and everywhere  meant the other. As if there were a simple relationship between the two acts, and the only reason anyone ever bought a book was to read it, the purchase a promise always made good.
Somehow, this needs to be broken.
There has to be a way to talk about book purchases as culturally meaningful and yet distinct from and different from acts of reading.4. The myth of infatuated Žižekians
I couldn't name even one orthodox Žižekian. One really dogmatic one. One good apologist for or public proclaimer of true Žižekism.3. Mark Driscoll on Pot: sloppy, lazy and deeply unserious
Rather, what one finds is an almost ritual distancing and disowning.
Talk about Žižek is regularly prefaced with disclaimers. One has to apparently deny, first, any affiliation with a broader Žižek project, deny buying into a big Žižek system of thought, deny going too far, or accepting all of it, or not being critical enough. One has to start with a little ritual reiteration about how of course he's wrong, but there's some salvageable aspect in spite of all that.
If Žižek has followers, they're all Peter right before the cock crows that third time.
This whole booklet seems to presuppose the reader is not a half-way intelligent, reasonably capable adult human being in 21st century America. The assumption on every page is that the reader needs the most basic information explained. Driscoll may say he wants Christians and his congregants specifically to think these issues through like adults, but he doesn't act like he's writing for adults. This booklet makes no sense unless you think the intended audience is people who are incapable of considering an issue like the morality of marijuana without a lot of handholding and rudimentary help.2. Prophecies
1. Ignoring David Foster Wallace's religion
Though it's known that, at one point, Wallace belonged to a church in Illinois -- maybe a Mennonite church -- and also he reportedly twice attempted to join the Catholic Church, there's not much more information about his religiousness. Beliefs, practices, problems or questions, affiliations -- it's all question marks. A lot is known about his life, but not about this. His life fascinates people, and moves people. His ethical-religious reflections especially.
But no one in the position to find out more about his religious beliefs or practices seems to have been interested in doing so.
Thursday, 27 December 2012
Monday, 24 December 2012
Monday, 10 December 2012
Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Thursday, 22 November 2012
Sunday, 7 October 2012
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