Steveawiggins

LATEST ARTICLES ( 4291 )

• Portrait of God as a Young Man

  

  Famed swing state Ohio is back in the news with Jesus in the front lines. It was an unlikely setting to notice such a thing. I was sitting in a conference room... Read more

  Posted on 16 February 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Implausible Deniability

  

  Sandy gave us a little taste of dampness under the gunnel. You see, people live by the water because it beckons to us. That was actually Rachel Carson’s idea,... Read more

  Posted on 15 February 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Grown up Fish

  

  Embryonic recapitulation. That’s what it used to be called. I didn’t learn about this in biology class, but rather in the Creationist literature that... Read more

  Posted on 14 February 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Call It the Blues

  

  Coming back to The Blues Brothers after a couple of decades proved to be a kind of personal enlightenment. Of course I remembered “We’re on a mission from... Read more

  Posted on 13 February 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Popeless

  

  Pope Benedict XVI managed to catch many of us off-guard with his early retirement option. Not within living memory, or even very dusty, antiquated memory has a... Read more

  Posted on 12 February 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Maltese Faction

  

  The Crusades remain one of the most celebrated episodes of religious violence in the history of the church. I am certain that many would put forward other... Read more

  Posted on 11 February 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• God’s Country Club?

  

  Heaven is a sparsely populated place. Considering its vast celestial real estate, vis-a-vis the earth, it must be downright lonely. Maybe that’s the way the... Read more

  Posted on 10 February 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Peculiar Mythology

  

  Confession: I love books like Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Ambiguity in fiction is under-appreciated at times. Read more

  Posted on 09 February 2013 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Rise of Religions

  

  Imagine my surprise when, as a boy raised in a fundamentalist family, I arrived at a liberal seminary to find myself accused of sexism. Like most kids I had bee... Read more

  Posted on 08 February 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Scouting for Boys

  

  I guess losing a bid for a presidential nomination sanctions a guy to speak for God. Of course, that goes for just about any Republican these days. Read more

  Posted on 07 February 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Real World Ethics

  Do yourself a favor. Spend five minutes watching this video:Although it has a whiff of the apocryphal about it, I choose to believe that Kai is really who he... Read more

  Posted on 06 February 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Secular Oaths

  

  “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States,” so begins the story. With President Obama’s second... Read more

  Posted on 05 February 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Poe

  

  On his birthday I began reading a biography of Edgar Allan Poe. The last biography of Poe I read, I’m embarrassed to admit, was in high school. To me Poe is lik... Read more

  Posted on 04 February 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• On a Wager and a Prayer

  

  I’ve been thinking about Job a lot lately. Not my job, but the biblical book. Way back when I was preparing my initial classnotes on Job, I remember a... Read more

  Posted on 03 February 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Ad Lib

  

  Somewhere in the back of my mind I’ve had a notion to research and write a book on the history of “bad words.” Being raised Evangelical, I had a preternatural... Read more

  Posted on 02 February 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Invoking Imbolc

  

  As the year continues her eternal circle, we find ourselves once again at Imbolc, the cross-quarter day between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. Read more

  Posted on 01 February 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• On My Honor

  

  Some old fashioned institutions fear new learning. Although I was a Boy Scout for only a couple of years, I grew up in Cub Scouts and Webelos and had a pretty... Read more

  Posted on 31 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Mercurial Monotheism

  

  A friend recently asked about Isaiah 45.7, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things. Read more

  Posted on 30 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Know Thyself

  

  Perhaps it is a perverted sign of the times, but sometimes I seek myself online. Not surprisingly, most of what I find there is stuff I’ve posted myself. Read more

  Posted on 29 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Old-Tyme Religion

  

  Run, two, three, jump, slap, run, two, three, jump. I can’t believe that I’m Molly dancing on a January afternoon with total strangers and it’s just over... Read more

  Posted on 28 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY