The Immanent Frame

How could a human invention hold such sway over us as a people? Garry Wills argues that the gun is, for most Americans, a sacred object.

An influential thinker in the areas of Christology, eschatology, and the problem of evil, Hick will likely best be remembered for his “pluralistic hypothesis.”

A Tennessee judge has upheld his earlier decision allowing the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro to build a new mosque and community center.

Mark Oppenheimer discusses Charles Taylor’s work and its reception in a wide-ranging essay in The Nation.

In the current issue of the New Yorker, James Wood reviews The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now (Princeton, 2011).

David Sehat talks about his new book, The Myth of American Religious Freedom, in a two-part interview with Paul Harvey on the Religion in American History blog.

Lee Gilmore reflects on the opening blessing at Obama’s Tucson speech last week by Carlos Gonzales, who identified himself as a Yaqui and fifth-generation Mexican-American.

Julia Galef reports for Religion Dispatches on philosopher Keith Parsons’s decision to quit doing philosophy of religion. In September, Parsons, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, had announced on the The Secular Outpost.

In an essay on Slate, Shankar Vedantam speculates on why Americans tend to overreport attendance at religious services.

A Florida church’s plans to burn copies of the Qur’an on September 11 have drawn widespread condemnation, including from the local fire department.