Did you catch this New York Times story of the “simple chair” that’s being built for the Pope to use when he comes to visit the US next month?
The story opens with: Continue reading
How many men does it take to build a simple chair?
Reply
Tag Archives: Pope
Putting Us in Our Place
There’s an interesting story now making the rounds of the internet, in which Congressman Jeff Duncan (Republican, South Carolina, pictured above) is quoted as saying the following about the Roman Catholic Church’s recent recognition of Palestine as a state:
Of course the deep irony is the speed with which a variety of politicians in the US cite their own religious beliefs as evidence for their political positions or how frequently they decry the so-called separation of church and state — when it suits them.
That’s what makes this quote news. Continue reading
Membership Has Its Privileges
My first book, Manufacturing Religion, was a critique of what I called the discourse on sui generis religion — that is, the approach to studying religion that presumes its object of study is somehow unique, self-caused, original, one of a kind, can’t be fully explained, etc. To rephrase it, it was a critique of those who think that, when it comes to studying religion, a special set of interpretive tools must be used, to get at the deep meaning of religious acts and symbols, tools that are different from how we study other mundane aspects of the human.
Because, well, religion is just different. It’s religion! Continue reading