MetaFilter posts tagged with Religion and theology

Navigating the Post-Secular

superiorchicken — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 12:40:09 -0800

John Milbank and Katherine Pickstock are interviewed about Radical Orthodoxy I was surprised near the beginning when the narrator started talking about theology being referred to all over the place in newspapers. What don't I understand about the U.K.? Anyway, this is a very interesting look into one of the hotter trends happening in Christian theology today. Radical Orthodoxy has some import on work in the social sciences, and its critique of modernity is, I think, especially important. If you want to look further, I recommend picking up Jamie Smith's book "Introducing Radical Orthodoxy", a tough but rewarding read.

Open Source Religion

homunculus — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:21:09 -0800

Open to Revisions. "Some religious entrepreneurs have adopted an 'open source' model, where rituals and doctrines can be rewritten as easily as computer code."

Roger Williams

homunculus — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 21:20:30 -0800

The First Founder: The American Revolution of Roger Williams. [Via 3quarksdaily]

A completely revised edition of the Masseian corpus with all the flaws taken out

tellurian — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:52:58 -0800

Masseiana - Containing the three major works of Gerald Massey and his minor work commonly titled: The Lectures. Published here in their entirety, fully revised and amended, with additional material by the editor.

Swimming upstream.

allkindsoftime — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 03:47:40 -0800

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism is a book released last month by Tim Keller. Its faired reasonably well (NYT, login req'd), which is interesting, considering the wide success of books preaching the opposite message, as of late (Dawkins, et. al.). A little more from Newsweek. Coming soon to a uni near you.

The most important Evangelical you've never heard of

verb — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:58:26 -0800

Christianity is not just a series of truths but Truth -- Truth about all of reality. And the holding to that Truth intellectually... brings forth not only certain personal results, but also governmental and legal results.

When the Religious Right cruised onto the cultural scene in the late 1970s, the road map was drawn by oddball Pennsylvanian Francis Schaeffer. Generally regarded as the first (perhaps only) Evangelical philosopher, Schaeffer's views on the fundamental clash between Christian and secular belief systems became the talking points for a generation of American Christians. The movement's trajectory, though, left many of Schaeffer's more nuanced beliefs by the wayside. His son's recent writings suggest that it didn't take long for the father of the Religious Right to regret what he'd birthed.

'…makes Dick Cheney sound like Thomas Mann.'

shakespeherian — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 00:23:29 -0800

He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. -- Terry Eagleton on Richard Dawkins' new book, The God Delusion.

The Ultimate Internet Mashup

sgt.serenity — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 16:07:36 -0800

The Summa Theologica Of St Thomas Aquinas VERSUS St Augustine's City Of God .(you tube link)

OMeGa

brownpau — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 16:36:11 -0800

Interpreting Revelation's "Millenium." Outside of the all-too-virulent rapture-crazy pre-tribulational dispensationalist premillenialism permeating JesusLand, some Christians hold to other, more nuanced eschatological alternatives. You've got historic post-tribulational premillenialism, which places the transformation of the faithful at the final judgment rather than before it; amillenialism, which regards Christ's "millenial" reign as a symbolic spiritual reign culminating in the last judgment; and postmillenialism, which sees the millenium as a gradual progression towards goodness and light. Overlapping those, you have the "it's all been fulfilled" preterists, and their prophecy-party-pooping compatriots, the hyper-preterists. It's a debate just slightly more fun than the end of the universe. Meanwhile, the noncanonical apocalypses sit in a corner, sadly ignored, and sunny Megiddo is still waiting for some end times action.

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

Meaning of Life

andrew cooke — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 17:29:27 -0800

The Meaning of Life according to various rather famous people (Dennett, Fukuyama, etc). I'm watching the Dennett video at the moment and it starts rather weakly, but, by midway through, is rolling along nicely. With topics like "being good without god" and "the anthropic principle" it struck me as relevant to a couple of recent askmefi threads.
Dennett: [pause] i guess i'll say it again, more slowly...
(oh, and the player interface is rather delicate - give it time to load and click play a few times...)

Bill Moyers on democracy excrutiate.

fold_and_mutilate — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 14:03:36 -0800

"How do we nurture the healing side of religion over the killing side? How do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of an imperial state? OVER THE PAST few years, as the poor got poorer, the health care crisis worsened, wealth and media became more and more concentrated, and our political system was bought out from under us, prophetic Christianity lost its voice. The Religious Right drowned everyone else out. And they hijacked Jesus. The very Jesus who stood in Nazareth and proclaimed, 'The Lord has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor.' The very Jesus who told 5,000 hungry people that all of you will be fed, not just some of you. The very Jesus who challenged the religious orthodoxy of the day by feeding the hungry on the Sabbath, who offered kindness to the prostitute and hospitality to the outcast, who raised the status of women and treated even the tax collector like a child of God. The very Jesus who drove the money changers from the temple. This Jesus has been hijacked and turned into a guardian of privilege instead of a champion of the dispossessed. Hijacked, he was made over into a militarist, hedonist, and lobbyist, sent prowling the halls of Congress in Guccis, seeking tax breaks and loopholes for the powerful, costly new weapon systems that don't work, and punitive public policies."
Bill Moyers on democracy excruciate.

Pontius Pilate contracted his brows, and his hand rose to his forehead...

matteo — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 11:26:17 -0800

"Jesus?" he murmured, "Jesus -- of Nazareth?..." Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judea, is the only historical figure named in the Nicene Creed -- Coptic saint or eternally damned, his role in the greatest story ever told has been debated by many of history's greatest minds: St Augustine, Dante Alighieri, Tintoretto, John Ruskin, Mikhail Bulgakov, Monty Python. Unfortunately, there is very little historical evidence about him. His role in the death of a certain charismatic Galilean healer and apocalyptic preacher is still being debated today by theologians and historians alike. He is also, of course, the main character of The Procurator of Judea, the classic short story (complete text in main link) by Anatole France. (France's magnificent story has lately been tragically neglected by publishers, even if the author was one of his era's most acclaimed writers in the world -- he won the Nobel Prize in 1921 over Shaw, Yeats, Joyce, Thomas Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, and Proust, and when he died in 1924, hundreds of thousands of people followed his funeral procession through Paris). These last 2,000 years of fascination with Pilatus can be explained, some argue... (more inside, for those unwilling to wash their hands of this post)

Web Project Seeks to Digitize Religious Images for Theological Libraries

turbanhead — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 11:57:23 -0800

Web Project Seeks to Digitize Religious Images for Theological Libraries The American Theological Library Association's Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative aims to create a large database of religious images to spare research librarians the expense of digitizing documents that other institutions have already scanned

A Summary of Pythagorean Theology

oissubke — Thu, 20 Mar 2003 07:53:54 -0800

A Summary of Pythagorean Theology

A Remainder of Fear

The Jesse Helms — Mon, 25 Nov 2002 07:29:15 -0800

If you have sex before marriage, you will die. Why is fear so often used to promote an agenda?

Sean Meade — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 14:02:24 -0800

Today is Reformation Day, the anniversary of Martin Luther nailing the 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church in 1517. He was largely criticizing the practice of selling indulgences (forgiveness for sins). He didn't intend to split with the church. He left room for the Pope to slip out of the indulgences corruption. But the Pope didn't, and the split eventually came.

"Listen up: God isn't Santa"

UrbanFigaro — Sat, 13 Oct 2001 20:08:24 -0800

"Listen up: God isn't Santa" says a retired bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church. The basis of prayer has always seemed like a paradox to me. I'm glad to see that John Shelby Spong agrees.

Where Was God?

bunnyfire — Sun, 07 Oct 2001 14:49:15 -0800

Where Was God? .......there is nothing else I can say about this.

tdecius — Tue, 02 Nov 1999 12:07:40 -0800

I encourage all people to take a look at a few sites to learn what Satanism actually is. As a nominal Christian, I was suprised to learn that Satanism isn't anything like popular culture says it is. Actually, as a student of theology, I found it fascinating. It's based on Magick and the teachings of British poet and mystic Aleister Crowley. The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance has a great introduction to Satanism, among 70 other faiths. The prominent Satanist 'church' is the Temple of Set. The Order of the Thelemic Golden Dawn is a notable Satanic order, but no Order compares to the Ordo Templi Orientis, an Order that Crowley himself ran. The Aleister Crowley Foundation and The Hermetic Library are two other interesting resources.

tdecius — Mon, 18 Oct 1999 12:49:50 -0800

I went to Catholic high school for two years, and being the incredibly geeky type, I wondered, given the Pope is the Bishop of Rome, how he ran the whole church and his provincial diocese. This site is a good snippet that answers the question, for those people like me who have academic interests in theology.