Posts
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A Country to Die For
Memorial Day as never been my favorite. In Arlington, Virginia, where I grew up, it always meant the roar of Vietnam Vets on motorcycles all day. And the occasion can bring out our most jingoistic spirit. As I passed three separate suspension bridges across the Hudson River today, each with a giant American flag hanging…
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The Defense Department Gospel
Donald Rumsfeld took the Lord’s name in vain. Today at Religion Dispatches, I discuss the documents released by GQ this weekend, cover sheets for 2003 intelligence briefings that Rumsfeld delivered to President Bush. On them, Biblical passages sit suggestively alongside scenes of desert warfare. With only the most cursory bit of investigation, I was able…
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The Original Peaceniks
My review of Joseph Kip Kosek’s Acts of Conscience appears in this week’s Commonweal. The online version is subscription-only, but the magazine is well worth picking up at your local newsstand. In his new history of Christian nonviolence from World War I to Vietnam, Joseph Kip Kosek asks what this movement has offered American democracy,…
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Star Trek Sans Politics
I’ve got a new essay on Religion Dispatches that I did up in a sleepless tizzy after seeing the new Star Trek movie. I had a great time going with my old Star Trek convention buddy Mat to the Lincoln Center IMAX on opening week. Nothing can quite compete with the thrill of seeing those…
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The Teachings of Carl on Vice
Vice magazine has just run a blog post of mine, an invitation into the world and works of Carl Johnson, whom I visited last month in his hometown of Thornton, IL. He’s a man of cosmic imagination who doesn’t get on well with his neighbors. Check out the pamphlet I published in 2006 of one…
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Regions of the Great Heresy
At the 92nd Street Y tonight, I joined KtB author Ann Neumann for a lecture by the Israeli novelist David Grossman on Bruno Schulz. Jonathan Safran Foer, in turn, introduced Grossman. Grossman said that everybody remembers when and how they discovered Bruno Schulz—I am no exception. It was in my first college fiction writing class,…
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Credit Card Rosary
The Row Boat has already become something of a destination for people interested in wallets. This post is a contribution to that burgeoning tradition. My friend/hero Will, who for the months since his success in electing Barack Obama president has made it his business to travel around “visiting people,” sent me a delightful little gift…
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Work Is Love Made Visible
On the subway last night, for the third time in recent months, I happily ran into E—we’d met at a party once, and we’ve been building a little friendship out of chance meetings on the C train. I was with my friends, and he was with his. His friends happened to mention that they regretted…
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The Poem of Force
Some time ago, a dear friend shared with me a photocopy of some sections of Simone Weil’s essay The Iliad or The Poem of Force. I remember being haunted by those pages at the time, and I kept them in a safe and prominent place but never opened them again. Until, at least, the other…