Spring 2006
Featured
God: Chart Topper
If you want to hear folk singing praises to God these days, no need to go to church. Just turn on a local top-40 radio station. Or the Grammys. By Ben Westhoff
In the Footsteps of Walter Benjamin
On September 26, 1940, philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin took his own life at Banyuls-sur-mer on the French Catalonian coast, after attempting to flee across the Pyrenees. A visit there can be frustrating, but also profoundly moving. By Michael D. Jackson
Gospel According To . . .
While Kanye West’s hip-hop “Jesus Walks” can be considered a turning point in the history of black sacred music, the fears that it represents the wresting of the “sacred” from the faithful are ahistorical. By Wallace Best
The Gift of Black Pentecostalism
African American Pentecostalism has a gift to offer for the renewal of the Christian church and for the healing of the nations. By Robert M. Franklin
Toward a Theology of Sound
In Santería possession performance, “divinely targeted sound,” through drums, rattles, and maracas, as well as discourse about that sound, map the experience of divine transcendence onto a human grid. By Katherine J. Hagedorn
The Revisionist History of Benedict XVI
In his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, the new pope argues that the primary work of the Church, supported by liturgy and study of the Word, is charity. Strangely, his argument barely includes mention of women. By Phyllis Zagano
Dialogue
Toward a New Cold War
The term “cold war” has a troubling, ironic resonance as the West and the Islamic East eye each other. By Emran Qureshi
The Gentler Yin
Muslim history’s rich, eloquent, peaceful “yin” side, from a Hindu perspective. By Vipan Chandra
Whose Judaism?
Why can’t Judaism decide whether women should finally have the same positions of authority that men do? By Jordana Gerson
In Review
Shelf Life
Recalled to Life
Marie Cardinal’s The Words to Say It: An Autobiographical Novel. By Davíd Carrasco
Required Reading
Rethinking Christian Claims to Universalism
Denise Kimber Buell’s Why This New Race? Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity. By Karen L. King
Books
Turning Hegel on His Side
An interview with Thomas A. Lewis. By Wendy McDowell
Books
Reading Rorty as Theology
Eduardo Mendieta’s Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself: Interviews With Richard Rorty. By Todd Shy
Poetry
Ewe
By Frannie Lindsay
Three Poems
Storefront: Botanica San Miguel
Birthday Across Parallel Universes
Annunciation
By Michael Lynch
In The Garden
By Michael Lynch
Perspective
A Call for Readers to Join the Cause
A call to readers to aid financially in the Bulletin’s ambitious venture. By Will Joyner
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