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Showing posts from April, 2011

Finally, A Bible for Humanists

Christians in the English-speaking world may be surprised to learn that a new “Bible” has appeared and has quickly rushed to be the number one seller on Amazon’s spirituality category. It is not, however, a Bible with which Christians are familiar, at least in this form. Rather, it is a “Bible” assembled for humanists, secularists, atheists, and erstwhile religionists. The noted British scholar and philosopher at the University of London, A. C. Grayling, acknowledges that the Bible familiar to Christians has exercised an extraordinary influence on Western history and culture, but he wonders, at the same time, what the history and culture might have looked like if together with, or in place of, the Bible, a different set of seminal influential texts had been assembled and consulted for moral guidance and social development. With this question in mind, Grayling set out to assemble such a collection of writings, and it has just been published with the eye-catching title, The G

Kangaroo Justice, Real Violence

Given the global attention received last fall by the Florida pastor who announced that he would burn the Quran on the anniversary of 9/11, I was frankly surprised to learn that he had found a way to break his promise and burn one anyway. Pastor Terry Jones and his congregation at Dove World Outreach Center had managed to stay below the national media radar; most people probably forgot about them in places other than their community of Gainesville, Florida. But they have certainly been caught in the radar now, having done something even more daring and despicable than the demeaning act of burning a copy of the Quran. The pastor held court with the Quran as the defendant. On March 20, 2011, he set himself up as the judge, invited a Muslim who had converted to Christianity to serve as prosecuting attorney and the president of the Islamic Center of Texas to act as defense attorney. “Expert” witnesses included other Muslims who had converted to Christianity. What were the c