MetaFilter posts tagged with Religion and books

The Stephen King Universe Flow Chart

Artw — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 22:45:10 -0800

Gillian James charts the connections in the Stephen King universe* Meanwhile The Guardian is rereading King begining with Carrie and Salems Lot, CNN has discovered The Gospel of Stephen King, and in further Castle Rock news a new movie version of It is being made.
* Not including The Dark Tower

The Cartoon Guide to Life, the Universe, and Everything

Rhaomi — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 11:20:53 -0800

Larry Gonick is a veteran American cartoonist best known for his delightful comic-book guides to science and history, many of which have previews online. Chief among them is his long-running Cartoon History of the Universe (later The Cartoon History of the Modern World), a sprawling multi-volume opus documenting everything from the Big Bang to the Bush administration. Published over the course of three decades, it takes a truly global view -- its time-traveling Professor thoroughly explores not only familiar topics like Rome and World War II but the oft-neglected stories of Asia and Africa, blending caricature and myth with careful scholarship (cited by fun illustrated bibliographies) and tackling even the most obscure events with intelligence and wit. This savvy satire carried over to Gonick's Zinn-by-way-of-Pogo chronicle The Cartoon History of the United States, along with a bevy of Cartoon Guides to other topics, including Genetics, Computer Science, Chemistry, Physics, Statistics, The Environment, and (yes!) Sex. Gonick has also maintained a few sideprojects, such as a webcomic look at Chinese invention, assorted math comics (previously), the Muse magazine mainstay Kokopelli & Co. (featuring the shenanigans of his "New Muses"), and more. See also these lengthy interview snippets, linked previously. Want more? Amazon links to the complete oeuvre inside! Reading note: All the book titles in the post above link to readable versions on the web. Some of the older Cartoon Guides and the first chunk of the original Cartoon History of the Universe comics (through Volume 9 -- ancient China) are available in full; the rest, including the (two-part) Modern World series and The United States, are available partially through Harper-Collins' free book preview feature, which includes the first dozen or so pages of each book and then jumps ahead randomly from there to the end. So pay attention to the page numbers on those links to avoid getting caught off guard by the (unannounced) page-skips! Amazon links:

Cartoon History: The Cartoon History of the Universe I (Vol. 1-7): From the Big Bang to Alexander the Great (1990) The Cartoon History of the Universe II (Vol. 8-13): From the Springtime of China to the Fall of Rome (1994) The Cartoon History of the Universe III (Vol. 14-19): From the Rise of Arabia to the Renaissance (2002) The Cartoon History of the United States (1991) The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 1: From Columbus to the U.S. Constitution (2007) The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 2: From the Bastille to Baghdad (2009) Cartoon Guides: The Cartoon Guide to Genetics (1983) The Cartoon Guide to the Computer (1991) The Cartoon Guide to Physics (1992) The Cartoon Guide to (Non) Communication (1993) The Cartoon Guide to Statistics (1994) The Cartoon Guide to the Environment (1996) The Cartoon Guide to Sex (1999) The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry (2005) Other: Kokopelli & Company in Attack of the Smart Pies (2005)

Original manuscript of AA's "Big Book" to be made public

Joe Beese — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:53:41 -0800

For millions of addicts around the world, Alcoholics Anonymous's basic text - informally known as the Big Book - is the Bible. And as they're about to find out, the Bible was edited. After being hidden away for nearly 70 years and then auctioned twice, the original manuscript by AA co-founder Bill Wilson is about to become public for the first time next week, complete with edits by Wilson-picked commenters that reveal a profound debate in 1939 about how overtly to talk about God.

POST TITLE REDACTED

Horace Rumpole — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 09:08:34 -0800

Just in time for Banned Books Week, the Bridwell Library at SMU presents "Heresy and Error": The Ecclesiastical Censorship of Books, 1400-1800.

God is cruel

fearfulsymmetry — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 03:40:02 -0800

'Around my house we kinda laugh when Sarah Palin comes on TV, and we say, "That's Greg Stillson as a woman."' Interview with Stephen King on the thirtieth anniversary of The Stand.

Lyra and her dæmon moved through the darkening hall...

blahblahblah — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 23:11:01 -0800

The His Dark Materials movie is taking shape. The award-winning children's series, considered the "anti-Narnia", is due on the screen in 2007, starring a actress found in open casting, along with Nicole Kidman (as Mrs. Coulter, for those who know the books). Unfortunately, the screenplay by Tom Stoppard has been dumped, though the new one appears to be to the author's liking. There is no official trailer yet, but there are several more or less painful fan-made ones. The series has also been made into a successful play, and a radio program. For those who haven't read it, an excerpt is here; and for those that have, try the interactive alethiometer or find out your daemon's name. Previous discussion on the debate with the Archbishop of Canterbury was here.

Heaven Up Here

The Jesse Helms — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 13:29:50 -0800

Sam Harris on why religious moderates are worse than fundamentalists. (Salon click-through ad) "Religious moderates are, in large part, responsible for the religious conflict in our world, because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed."

Harold Bloom, Jesus and Tanakh

matteo — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 11:05:34 -0800

"It is absurd to talk about a Judeo-Christian tradition".
I had been born in the United States but didn't know any English because none was spoken at home or in the streets. We were a solid enclave of some 600,000 Eastern European, Yiddish-speaking Jews. But I still remember one day that a missionary came to the door with what I still have my copy of: a Yiddish translation of the New Testament. There's a kind of grim joke in that, isn't there? In the mere existence of it.
Harold Bloom on religion in America, God smoking a cigar, and who really is the King of the Jews.

Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail

huskerdont — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 12:11:41 -0800

Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail. Best known as the drummer for 1970s punk band The Damned, Rat Scabies grew up with a father interested in the mysteries of the French town of Rennes-le-Château, which may or may not contain the Holy Grail and in the enigmatic priest Berenger Sauniere. Conspiracy theories surrounding the town first popped up in the 1970s book Holy Blood, Holy Grail and gained a certain amount of infamy in recent years from The DaVinci Code. Upon striking up a friendship with his neighbor, journalist Christopher Dawes, Scabies discovered common interests in conspiracy theories and all things paranormal and a shared hatred of the DaVinci Code. Now the pair wrote a book about their alcohol-sodden quest for the Holy Grail that asks the question: What happens when an ex-punk rocker goes looking for the Holy Grail?

Rebecca Protten and the origins of African American Christianity.

matteo — Sun, 15 May 2005 09:46:30 -0800

Rebecca's Revival. Rebecca Protten, born a slave in 1718, gained her freedom and joined a group of proselytizers from the Moravian Church. She embarked on an itinerant mission, preaching to hundreds of the enslaved Africans of St. Thomas, West Indies. Weathering persecution from hostile planters, Protten and other black preachers created the earliest African Protestant congregation in the Americas. University of Florida historian Jon Sensbach has written a book about Protten's life -- the interracial marriage, the trial on charges of blasphemy and inciting of slaves, the travels to Germany and West Africa. Later in her life, after she moved to Germany, Rebecca was ordained as a deaconess: "a former slave now administered Communion and practiced other claims to spiritual authority over white women, including European aristocrats." More inside.

Alexander the Corrector

matteo — Sun, 03 Apr 2005 10:03:27 -0800

The Man Who Unwrote the Bible. In the mid-1720s, Alexander Cruden took on a self-imposed task of Herculean proportions: he decided to compile the most thorough concordance of the King James Version of the Bible (777,746 words). The first edition of Cruden's Concordance was published in 1737. Every similar undertaking before or since has been the work of a vast team of people. Cruden worked alone in his lodgings, writing the whole thing out by hand. Cruden's day job was as a "Corrector of the Press" (proofreader). He would give hawk-eyed attention to prose all day long. Then he would come home at night to read the Bible—stopping at every single word to secure the right sheet from the tens of thousands of pieces of paper all around him and to record accurately the reference in its appropriate place. He had no patron, no publisher, no financial backers: his only commission was a divine one.
Cruden's Concordance has never been out of print. A new book tells the tale of Alexander the Corrector's bizarre, sad life (scroll down to about half page).

The Gorge

matteo — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 11:06:57 -0800

"... Giordano Bruno might have been a pantheist. A pantheist believes that God is everywhere, even in that speck of a fly you see there. You can imagine how satisfying that is—being everywhere is like being nowhere. Well, for Hegel it wasn’t God but the State that had to be everywhere; therefore, he was a Fascist.”
“But didn’t he live more than a hundred years ago?”
“So? Joan of Arc, also a Fascist of the highest order. Fascists have always existed. Since the age of . . . since the age of God. Take God—a Fascist.”
Umberto Eco in the New Yorker

A Tale of Two Christianities

matteo — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 20:08:08 -0800

Born-again liberal Christians. Do you think that mainline denominations are hemorraging members? Wrong. Fundamentalist Christianity is the way of the future and all US Evangelicals worship the same political party? Not so fast, buddy. Many scholars and theologians think that it's time for liberals to take Christianity back. Oregon State's Marcus J Borg, for example, argues that Christianity "still makes sense and is the most viable religious option for millions". He contends the earlier paradigm, based upon a punitive God, simply doesn't work anymore for too many people. It is an argument for an alternative to the literalist and exclusivist tradition that has dominated Western Christianity in the modern era. According to Borg, "So different are these two views of Christianity that they almost produce two different religions, both using the same Bible and language. A time of two paradigms is virtually a tale of two Christianities." There is, for example, an alternative view to the Resurrection Narrative not as report of an actual, physical event but as means for Jesus' early followers to express the miracle of his continuing spiritual presence among them, after his execution. It is in short an 'emerging paradigm which has been developing for over a hundred years and has recently become a major grass-roots movement within mainline denominations'. Just don't be afraid to ask questions. Not even about the dogs beneath the Cross. More inside.

The Interesting Yezidis

plep — Fri, 17 Sep 2004 05:44:25 -0800

Devil Worship: The Sacred Books and Traditions of the Yezidiz , by Isya Joseph, 1919. 'This is one of the only public domain sources of information on the religious beliefs of the Yezidi, a small group originally from the northern region of Iraq. Although they speak Kurdish, they are a distinct population from the Kurds. The Yezidi are notable because they have been described as devil-worshippers, which has naturally led to constant persecution by the dominant Islamic culture of the region ... They have many unique beliefs, such as that the first Yezidi were created by Adam by parthenogenesis separately from Eve ... ' New on sacred-texts.com.

G.O.P. D.O.A.

Miyagi — Wed, 28 Jul 2004 18:25:15 -0800

G.O.P. D.O.A. , the new novel by Brooklyn-based Contemporary Press, just got denied a reprinting by St. Louis-based Plus Communications. Although they printed the first edition less than one month ago, the publisher says that their religious clients would be upset by the book's 'language' and have refused to reprint it.

I guess that is in the same spirit as Rev. Breedlove's attempt to rekindle the tradition of book burning earlier this month.

Except not every scene in Harry Potter revolves around a cell phone...

PinkStainlessTail — Tue, 18 May 2004 14:16:03 -0800

The Harry Potter series and the Left Behind series are more alike than you might think...

Softsoaping Armageddon

jonp72 — Wed, 26 Mar 2003 18:59:51 -0800

"Armageddon" is not a global conflagration gone totally out of control. It is, instead, the gathering of the armies of Satan in a place called Armageddon at the north end of Israel. Huh? Anyway, it's not like these guys are influencing American foreign policy. Heads up for April 8 when Tim La Haye, co-founder of the ultraconservative Council for National Policy, will release Armageddon, the latest installment in the Left Behind series of millennialist apocalyptic thrillers.

The Gospel According to Harry Potter.

mikrophon — Tue, 08 Oct 2002 08:47:38 -0800

The Gospel According to Harry Potter. Connie Neal thinks that she sees "glimmers of the Gospel" in the Harry Potter books. Not the most interesting attempt to counter the occult hysteria surrounding this book, but sure to stir up some hilarious controversy just the same.

Barabbas

crunchburger — Fri, 29 Mar 2002 02:03:56 -0800

Barabbas was spared by the mob in lieu of Jesus on Good Friday. Pär Lagerkvist, a Swedish novelist, explored this incredible character in his 1950 novel:

The novel BARABBAS (1950) was immediately hailed as a masterwork...Barabbas, the criminal in the New Testament, is pardoned instead of Christ, and is sentenced to the silver mines. His is incapable of loving, but becomes gradually aware of greater forces guiding his life.

Now I am myself atheist/agnostic, but I think this is cool. It reminds me of Vonnegut's description of Kilgore Trout as a badly aging Christ, whose sentence of crucifixion had been commuted to life imprisonment.

Rastafari — Thu, 03 Jan 2002 12:35:35 -0800

The Salman Rushdie Redux: How CAIR, an American-Muslim advocasy group, put a hit on Khalid Durán because they did not like his book.

Jesse's Mistress Writing A Tell-All.

frednorman — Thu, 29 Mar 2001 00:49:07 -0800

Jesse's Mistress Writing A Tell-All. The mother of Jesse Jackson's love child is penning a tell-all book alleging she received a secret payoff of $450,000 from the civil-rights leader, that to prove Jackson was the father of her 22-month-old daughter, she froze a condom containing his sperm, that before giving birth to their child, Karin was pregnant by Jesse a previous time, but had an abortion at his request, and that after learning of the affair, Jackson's wife, Jackie, was so angry that she pointed a gun at him in their Chicago home and had to be restrained by a guest.