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Up one levelCan We Talk?
When I was studying feminist theory in graduate school, one of the most compelling arguments I read was that of Catherine MacKinnon, professor of law at the University of Michigan, whose Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law remains a classic text. MacKinnon, who pioneered the legal claim for sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination, says simply, “It’s not the gender difference but the difference gender makes.” I’ve been spending a good bit of time of late thinking about difference. Between an online course I’m taking on the civil rights movement—with focus on the Little Rock school desegregation episode—and an informal study a friend and I are pursuing on forgiveness, I’ve been immersed again in reading about what is referred to in the literature as “the Other” and how we are to relate to those who differ from us...
Religion in the news or as the news?
A new year invariably arrives with predictions regarding developments in the lives of individuals, Americans, the world. But when it comes to religion, the end of December comments on the Washington Post’s feature, “On Faith,” revealed a cynicism that anything at all will change in 2009, despite the promise that word holds in light of the presidential transition...
War without End?
The presidential campaign this year resurrected a term usually reserved in history books as code for the 1990s. Or should it more appropriately be understood as a perpetual aspect of American political discourse? Are we really engaged in another culture war? Or is Anna Quindlen right in her recent declaration that “the culture wars are over”?
One Pilgrim's Progress
O.P. Kretzmann was president of Valparaiso University when I started there as a freshman. By the time I graduated he had retired to the role of Chancellor and his health was failing, but most Monday evenings a room full of invited seniors literally sat at his feet to learn what we could from this remarkable man about living as Christians in the modern world...