Writings and rehearsals by Nathan Schneider

Author: Nathan

  • The Life and Death of the Death of God

    There’s a whole subculture of people who, when the newspaper arrives, go straight for the obituaries. Well, now they’ve got their own, quite excellent literary website: Obit. All death, all the time. I’ve got a new essay there on the “death of God” theology of the 1960s, a bit of a follow-up to my recent…

  • Beautiful Dreamers

    Today at Religion Dispatches, I’ve got a review of the forthcoming documentary Oh My God. Filmmaker Peter Rodger goes on a sophomoric quest to talk with actors and other people all over the world about what God means to them. But the images are just wonderful. If Oh My God is propaganda of some kind,…

  • Planning Is a New Variety of the Sin of Pride

    Jean-Luc Marion wrote, at the opening of his book God without Being, “One must admit that theology, of all writing, certainly causes the greatest pleasure.” Today, at the remarkable online journal Triple Canopy, I’ve got an essay that’s about the closest thing I’ve so far come to writing theology. It’s called “Divine Wilderness.” It is…

  • Harvey Cox and the Future of Faith

    I mentioned Harvey Cox, the Harvard theologian best-known for his 1960s book The Secular City, in my recent Guardian piece on “death of God” theology. Today, at The Immanent Frame, I have an interview with him about his recent retirement ceremony, the legacy of his early-career bestseller, and his latest work, The Future of Faith,…

  • Reverend Billy, the “Fake Leader”

    Especially when it comes to religion, the line between reality and performance can be very hard to draw. No one reveals this more than Reverend Billy, a New York-based performance artist who uses a televangelist act to preach against the evils of consumerism. In the city election next Tuesday, Billy—using his “real” name, William Talen—will…

  • Sackcloth on Wall Street

    Religion Dispatches posted a crazy little blog post of mine, “Repentance on Wall Street?” It came to mind after getting the chance to hear yet another rousing talk by Cornel West (along with Judith Butler, Jurgen Habermas, and Charles Taylor) at an SSRC event at Cooper Union. His words and encouragement, such as they are,…

  • Sentimental Repression

    It has been a welcome relief from the busy romantic adventures of a single fellow in his mid-twenties in New York City, with my cellular phone by happenstance out of commission, to indulge in a reverie of reflection. Its occasion—in addition to the missing phone—was the discovery of Mark Greif’s challenging new essay at n+1…

  • Have You Heard of Rashi?

    The day my essay, “The Self-Thinking Thought” appeared on the New York Times blog Happy Days, I received a letter that went thusly: I read your blog on Anselm; quite interesting. Your name sounds Jewish, and although you said you are Catholic, do you have Jewish ancestry? What do you know about Rashi, the great…

  • Spiritual Machines

    Today at The Immanent Frame, I’ve got an interview with John Lardas Modern, one of the most exciting young scholars of religion out there today: I’ve always been taken with gadgetry in a lot of ways, but at the same time I’m also afraid of my television set. My academic interest in technology stems from…

  • God Has Died Before

    I only just now realized that today the Guardian published a piece I did for them on the “death of God” theological controversy in the 1960s. It is geared, especially, as a reflection on the New Atheist debates that have been going on lately: Unlike some of the prominent atheists of today, these thinkers knew…