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Kingdom of Priests

In responding to Christianity, Jews historically have objected that the other faith gives too human a picture of God. Needless to say, as a Jew I’d have to agree. Yet nowadays from many Jews I find much less strenuous objection to spiritual ideas that picture God in a “refined supernaturalist” way, as William James put…

Some readers thought I was unfair in a previous entry explaining the difference between my perspective on evolution and that of my fellow Beliefnet blogger Dr. Francis Collins over at Science and the Sacred. Am I really not being fair? Well, let’s test that hypothesis by picking out one idea from Dr. Collins’s book and…

Though I find Reform Judaism to be massively deluded about Torah and Jewish faith, it also has its good points. For example, I’m charmed and cheered by the news that the first female African-American rabbi will receive ordination from the Reform Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. As the Jerusalem Post reports, Alysa Stanton is a psychotherapist, adoptive…

Astute readers will have noticed that Beliefnet runs two blogs that deal with evolution on a more or less frequent basis but in very different ways: this blog and Science and the Sacred, where former Human Genome Project head Francis Collins and other contributors from the BioLogos Foundation share their thoughts. An Evangelical Christian, Dr. Collins…

Recently a particularly thoughtful commenter on this blog mentioned in passing that he identifies as a Noachide, that is, a Gentile believer in Torah. I was so interested to hear this that I wrote to him and asked for his story, which he graciously provided. I am copying it below. It’s truly a privilege for…

Were you puzzled at all, as I was, over “comedian” Wanda Sykes’s stand-up routine at the White House Correspondents dinner and her curious choice of a medical image in assailing Rush Limbaugh? As President Obama smiled fondly and guffawed behind her, Sykes declared that since Limbaugh hopes Obama’s administration fails, “I hope his kidneys fail,…

I attended a Chasidic wedding Tuesday night and came away with a thought about religion generally, sparked also by an insight on economics, not my own.  On Monday I heard a great lecture by my friend Jay Richards at the Discovery Institute on his new book Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and…

I confess to having contrarian instincts. When the hounds are baying for someone’s blood, my inclination is to wonder if just perhaps the problem is with the hounds. I’ve never had an occasion to write about sexual and financial abuses committed by rabbis, pastors, and priests. With the vast majority of cases, I suppose a member of…

Perhaps as an antidote to Jewish histrionics in the context of the Pope’s Jerusalem visit, the Jerusalem Post carries a refreshing interview with Rabbi Norman Lamm of Yeshiva University, a prominent personality in centrist Orthodoxy. Rabbi Lamm has always struck me as a model of dignity, moderation, and good sense.  On the Pope: “The pope…

Now the criticism of Pope Benedict is that in speaking in memory of Holocaust victims at Yad Vashem, he was “restrained, almost cold.” Can anyone direct me to a video link where the former Cardinal Ratzinger appears unrestrained and full of emotion about anything?
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