Writings and rehearsals by Nathan Schneider

Category: Posts

  • God in Proof: An Evening of Song and Abstraction

    To celebrate the release of my book God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet, I’ll be joined by my friends in the medieval music ensemble Resonanda at the magnificent Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph in Brooklyn, New York. Readings from the book will intermingle with selections of medieval song,…

  • The Scandal of White Complicity

    In the national Catholic magazine America I’ve just published a short review of an important new book with a long title: The Scandal of White Complicity in U.S. Hyper-Incarceration: A White Spirituality of Resistance. It’s an effort by three Catholic thinkers to articulate the depth of white complicity in this country’s massive, highly racialized prison…

  • What Do You Believe? How Do You Know? Want a Free Book?

    For as long as I’ve been interested in the search for proofs about the existence of God, I’ve been interested in drawing them. Words and equations just didn’t seem like enough; to wrap my head around what these constructs were expressing, and to try to communicate them to others, I had to make pictures. As…

  • Hacking the World

    My profile of anthropologist Gabriella Coleman in The Chronicle of Higher Education opens with a scene from the New York City memorial service for Aaron Swartz in January: The forces that seem to have hastened Swartz’s death were very much haunting the room. In the audience was a mischievous, greasy-haired hacker known as “weev,” who…

  • The Pope Is Not the Church

    I like the new pope—more than I expected, at least. But even so let’s remember: The pope is not the church. It’s going to be very tempting to forget this fact over the next few days. The pundits, Catholic and otherwise, have been rapt in the suspense of awaiting the arrival of Pope Francis. We…

  • What I Learned about Empire in the West Bank

    The Holy Land is supposed to be a far-away place. So it has been ever since Peter and Paul journeyed there from Rome, since “next year in Jerusalem” became exilic Jews’ sigh of resolve or resignation, since the prize of that city excused crusades, since London redrew the map of Palestine as a solution to…

  • When You Need Your Notebook to Lie Flat

    Most of my writer friends are used to me extolling the virtues of Midori MD notebooks, these fabulous little buggers from Japan: tough signature-bound pages, bendability for comfy back-pocket storage (unlike your average Moleskine), and the ability to lie flat, on any page, at a moment’s notice. The toughness was especially useful when I took…

  • What the _ Did Occupy Do? Where the _ Is Occupy?

    For my report that appears in this week’s issue of The Nation, I had the chance to call Occupy movement organizers around the country and check in. The thing I heard, more than anything, was something like this: “I now know who I’m going to organize with for the rest of my life.” But this organizing…

  • Will Templeton Money Crown Philosophy Queen Again?

    Along with this most illustrative of illustrations, The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Chronicle Review this week includes a feature story of mine, “The Templeton Effect.” It’s something of a sequel to an article I did a couple of years ago in The Nation about the John Templeton Foundation—a sizable and eccentric funder whose interests include shaping the academic…

  • On Strike Against Myself

    I tried to go on strike for May Day, following the Occupy movement’s calls for a general strike, and it was harder than I thought. My decision was made official—that is, public—by Malcolm Harris’ inclusion of me in his piece, “How Does a Writer Strike?” The trouble is, of course, that I’m self-employed, and my…