Steveawiggins

LATEST ARTICLES ( 4674 )

• Just Books

  

  It’s very difficult to make your voice heard in this world. I’ve been talking for nearly half a century, and most of the time it’s like nobody’s listening. Read more

  Posted on 20 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Paranormal Academy

  

  A recurrent theme on this blog (as my faithful few will doubtless know) is that religion draws from the same stream of cultural energies as do other phenomena... Read more

  Posted on 19 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Rorschach Test

  

  Rutgers University, College Avenue Campus. I recall coming out on a sweltering night once in a while during a summer term, only to find a street evangelist... Read more

  Posted on 18 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Bridge Over Troubled

  

  The fundamental question of what counts as religion remains elusive. I read Robert Crawford’s What is Religion? hoping to find out. Read more

  Posted on 17 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Loneliness of Long-Distance Runners

  

  1988. I was standing along Boylston Street, in Copley Square, watching the Boston Marathon. As the weary first place runner trudged by, I somehow neglected to... Read more

  Posted on 16 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Sea Wonders

  

  There’s a hole in the bottom of the sea, if we are to believe childhood songs. News reports this past week, however, have suggested that just the opposite... Read more

  Posted on 15 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Parochial Education

  

  I’m sitting in King David’s Restaurant in Syracuse, New York. I’ve spent two days speaking with a wide diversity of religion scholars, and I’m realizing religio... Read more

  Posted on 14 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Adjunct Values

  

  Well, the internet seems to have discovered adjunct Hell. Naturally, I’m too late to be part of the statistics, but I never rule that out as a future fate. Read more

  Posted on 13 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Sterling Serling

  

  “There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. Read more

  Posted on 12 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Burnt Over

  

  I find myself in Syracuse. Skirting the very edge of the Burnt Over District, Syracuse is only a short distant from Oneida, birthplace of one of the uniquely... Read more

  Posted on 11 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• The Spice of Religion

  

  I haven’t really forgotten about the Bible. It has been such an integral part of my life that I couldn’t escape it if I tried. Going into religious studies,... Read more

  Posted on 10 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Lady Madonna

  

  Among the paintings and prints in the Edvard Munch collection on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York is a rendition of his famous Madonna. I first... Read more

  Posted on 09 April 2013 CULTURE, POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Intelligence, Evolved

  

  Anyone who has looked into the eyes of a cat or dog can have little doubt that they think. What exactly they think is, of course, a matter of conjecture. Read more

  Posted on 08 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• The Triumph of Lovecraft

  

  The deeper you peer into the mouth of nature, the more Lovecraftian the world becomes. Just days after I had posted a little meditation on Cthulhu, the great ol... Read more

  Posted on 07 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Which Lethbridge Witch?

  

  Thomas Charles Lethbridge was a twentieth-century explorer. I knew his name only from book covers, and since books published before the cynical 1980s have a fee... Read more

  Posted on 06 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Fearful Christianity

  

  So some North Carolina Republicans want to declare themselves a state religion. I wonder which one it will be? Hmmm, let me think… Whatever that religion will b... Read more

  Posted on 05 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Human Show

  

  At least a decade had passed since I watched The Truman Show. Jim Carrey has gone on to achieve an over-the-top kind of fame, but Truman is a thoughtful movie... Read more

  Posted on 04 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• They, Robots

  

  Somehow I knew robots would continue to be part of my life. After all, they are a staple of science fiction and they are indeed also a staple of science fact. Read more

  Posted on 03 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Buy Their Fruits

  

  A lot of things get thrust at you in Midtown Manhattan. Many of them are religious. As I was out on my lunch break, a Buddhist monk walked up to me on Second... Read more

  Posted on 02 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Flood Warning

  

  If you’re like any number of others in North America, you may be wondering when spring will arrive. Not meteorological spring—that has flown past already—but th... Read more

  Posted on 01 April 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY