Writings and rehearsals by Nathan Schneider

Author: Nathan

  • Summarizing Jordan

    At breakfast overlooking Jordan’s gorgeous Wadi Dhana nature preserve, my companion Mary and I got to talking with an Australian family in the middle of a several months’ tour across the world. The father, an environmental scientist, asked if we had any books in English to swap. He just finished what he had been reading,…

  • The New Young Turks

    Among the young, jet-setting Turks I’ve met who are interested in Islam, there is a common narrative. I heard it from a successful international book distributor, from a clerk at my hotel, and from a shy university student. You grow up in a family that considered itself Muslim but didn’t really pay much mind to…

  • Reconstructionist Catholics?

    A handful of Catholic higher-ups have recently voiced surprising sympathy for, of all things, the New Atheist project. One is Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, who, in a recent debate with Christopher Hitchens, seemed to agree with nearly everything Hitchens had to say. Another is the Vatican Latinist Reginald Foster, who appears in Bill Maher’s new film…

  • Face to Face

  • Ancient Scribbles

    A very satisfying day at Istanbul’s Archaeological Museum. As is typical, I got so thoroghly engrossed by the relatively small collection of ancient Mesopotamian inscriptions that I hardly had energy for the vast halls of pottery and burial monuments from antique Anatolia. Even so, the splendor of the Alexander Sarcophagous from Sidon (as well as…

  • Half Asleep in Istanbul

    I’ve just arrived in Istanbul, Turkey to begin a little more than two weeks in the Middle East. The mission: an article on science and Islam (plus the unexpected). I’m in a hostel overlooking the Bosphorus with Michael Jackson music videos playing, one after another. It was a spectacularly beautiful day to arrive at a…

  • Obama in Brooklyn

    I’ve got a new piece out today on Religion Dispatches, which I did after soldiering for Obama in Philadelphia a few weeks ago. The white racism I saw there made me want to see Obama’s candidacy from the other side of the tracks, so I went to the wonderful Baptist church next to my apartment…

  • When Soldiers Become Warriors

    For some time, I’ve been hearing talk of “warriors” or “warfighters,” rather than “soldiers,” in my casual observation of the U.S. military. You hear this at all levels, from infantrymen referring to themselves, to the “warfighter standardized equipment” discussed at the highest echelons of the military-industrial mafia. At a recent talk in New York, the…

  • Have Your Markets and Your Health Care Too

    Last night, a dear friend of mine told me that he may have lost his health coverage through Medicaid. No warning. He got a call from the pharmacy saying the insurance didn’t go through. If this is true, he may be in real trouble. He has cystic fibrosis, and he needs about $70,000/year in medicine…

  • Empathy in Action

    In case you haven’t noticed, there’s been an ongoing back-and-forth over in the comments at a recent post, which have forced me to explain more fully some earlier statements about empathy as a political virtue and skepticism as an intellectual habit. Joel, who has been patient enough to draw me out on these things, has…