Alan Moore — pagan, anarchist, wildly bearded author of V for Vendetta and the terrific superhero-deconstruction comic Watchmen — is not the person one might expect to write a poignant story of homecoming, conscience, repentance, and renewal. Then again, he is just the sort of person to write a horror comic about an advertising designer … Read more
What is done out of love is beyond good and evil. — Friedrich Nietzsche They developed an ethics of pure intention and true love; but their own affair was born from lust, and collapsed in physical and spiritual anguish. The Letters of Abelard and Heloise reveal two personalities of Shakespearean grandeur, great even when they … Read more
I’ve got a four-leaf clover And it ain’t done me a single lick of good — I’m still a drunk and I’m still a loser Living in a lousy neighborhood… — Old 97’s, “Four-Leaf Clover” I wasn’t a religiously inclined child. I was really the opposite: a superstitious child. I had a whole slew of … Read more
Someone else asked me, “Do you believe in anything?” I said to him, “I believe in Allah.” So he said, “But I believe in torture and I will torture you.” — sworn statement of Amin Sa’id al-Sheikh on his experiences in Abu Ghraib Elaine Scarry’s 1987 study The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking … Read more
Lobotomy Magnificat Kathy Shaidle, Oberon Press (1998), 104 pages Because the Fall warped all things in our world, even our language, in order to recover the truth about that world we must warp our language even further. T. S. Eliot did this, hitting the English language and Western culture until it shattered. In Lobotomy Magnificat, … Read more
15 Ways to Fix the Criminal Justice System The degree to which a society is civilized can be judged by entering its prisons. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead We’ve all heard the statistics: America incarcerates a greater percentage of its citizens than any other nation in the world, overtaking longtime front runner Russia … Read more
A witch helped me become a Christian. OK, the biographical blurbs on Tamora Pierce’s book jackets don’t actually call her a witch, but they do say that she’s taught witchcraft; close enough. Pierce is the author of several children’s fantasy series, of which the most famous is probably the Alanna series: Alanna: The First Adventure, … Read more
As Americans, we pride ourselves on tolerance and freedom of speech—yet we rarely use that freedom to investigate the biggest questions and divides in our society. The outsider perspective is typically one of the most incisive, and yet when it comes to Christianity, we rarely hear that perspective articulated clearly and with no punches pulled. … Read more