Dear readers,Professor Berger was stranded by Hurricane Sandy in Germany and therefore did not have the opportunity to write an essay this week. He is on his way back to the United States now, and will resume writing again next week.–– DM

Two periodicals that I read regularly have just published special anniversary issues. National Catholic Reporter has come out with a special issue to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Der Spiegel, the German news magazine, has a special issue devoted to another fiftieth anniversary, that one of a series […]

Once in a while a more or less esoteric academic event is picked up by the media. This has happened in September following a gathering (of all places in Rome) of a scholarly association of Coptic studies. This must be a small and exclusive club. (It must be satisfying to belong. I’m a little envious. […]

I feel that I should say something about the Middle East. After all, this blog is supposed to be mostly about religion. Here an entire region is exploding with rage in the name of religion, and what have I been writing about? About eco-ideologues flirting with an ancient goddess, and about homosexuals wanting to be […]

In the October 2012 issue of First Things there is an article by Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse, respectively on the faculties of Wheaton College and Regent University (two banner institutions in the vanguard of the Evangelical intellectual resurgence). The article deals with a curious event in the world of “reparative therapy”, which seeks to […]

I have not written any satire for this blog so far. Perhaps it is time to make up for this. A witty reader of the blog reminded me of a satire I wrote quite a few years ago and, frankly, had forgotten. I re-read it. It seems to me that it is still quite relevant. […]

My attention was riveted by a story in The Jerusalem Report of September 10, 2012, because it dealt with a topic that has fascinated me since my childhood (for a reason I will briefly mention momentarily). The story reports on a move to revive the Aramaic language in a Christian Arab village in Israel. Aramaic, […]

It has been pointed out to me that the last three posts on this blog were overly didactic, as if I were giving classroom lectures. Contrary to my earlier statement that I disclaim any pretension to being a Renaissance man, I may give the impression of pretending just that by holding forth consecutively on Catholicism, […]

The Huffington Post website carries a blog with the title “Faith Shift” written by Jaweed Kaleem. Last year, the blog reported on a large conference in Garrison, New York, supported by major Buddhist centers and periodicals. The focus of the conference was the future of Buddhism in America. The religion is represented in this country […]

There cannot be two other religious traditions whose historical relations have been as awful as those between Judaism and Christianity. For centuries Jews suffered discrimination and persecution in countries that defined themselves as Christian, culminating in the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust (while the Nazi ideology which legitimated the latter was anything but Christian, it […]