France

Newsweek has some edgy covers these days. How about, "The Case for Killing Granny"? Sure catches the eye. But "Is your Baby Racist?" on September 14, with an adorable little face staring innocently out, is equally disturbing.

A remarkable woman died this week - Soeur Emmanuelle, an indomitable nun who topped surveys time and again as France's most admired woman. Nora Boustany wrote a wonderful obituary in Friday's Washington Post. If you want to know what Faith in Action is about, look at her life and work.

Soeur Emmanuelle was a beacon at interfaith meetings, especially the annual Prayer for Peace that the Community of Sant'Egidio organizes each year (the next in Cyprus November 16-18). There, among somber and...

Barring a Late October Surprise, it seems likely that after November 4 American Conservatism is going to have a couple of years to just sit back and reflect.

While it spends 2008-2012 lounging about in sweat pants and thumbing through newspapers at the local coffee shop, it might notice a disheveled American Secularism blogging at the next table over. It too will be in something of a funk; 2008 was not a good year for nonbelievers and Church/State separatists.

If you knew absolutely nothing about the United States (but wanted to know) and predicated your quest for knowledge solely on the three 2008 presidential debates between John McCain and Barack Obama you might come to the conclusion that American politicians have no desire to infuse their politics with religion. Events like last night's encounter at Hofstra University were so bereft of reference to faith-based issues, you might conclude that the United States was France!

What does it all...

Tolstoy wrote that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The same could be said about the ethnic and religious conflicts that cause so much strife in the world--in Burundi, Sri Lanka, the Ivory Coast and the Middle East. Memories run deep, and anyone who attempts to mediate finds bitterness, conflicting narratives and wounded people. Efforts to find common threads that could lead to solutions can be slow, fitful, and full of pain.

I participated as a panelist (theme, cultural dialogue and media roles) in a large international conference in Fes, Morocco that ran June 3-6. It involved a lively and sometimes quite fractious debate about the proposed new Union, and was a lead up to the planned meeting of Mediterranean heads of state in Paris on July 13. The meeting was timed to conclude just on the eve of the opening of the Fes Festival of Global Sacred Music, now in its 14th year, and a substantial draw. However, there...

Music is a well known path for crossing wide cultural divides. Music speaks without words. It can epitomize a mood as well as a culture. And it can stir up emotions and preconceptions. There's a fascinating venture afoot in Fes, Morocco, to use those very qualities to bridge divides between the Muslim world and western cultures and faiths. The idea is that people can, through their love of music, explore new realms and appreciate the world's wonderful diversity. But even more, the hope is...

Section 1. The right of presidential aspirants to discuss religion, invoke sacred texts, or mention God on the campaign trail is hereby repealed

Section 2. Whenever a religious figure endorses any candidate for the presidency that candidate must...

Robert Bellah writes on the Immanent Frame: In his response to my concern about whether “post-Durkheimian” is a viable category, Charles Taylor goes part way in answering my query, but, in my view, not far enough. When he writes “I don’t think it’s possible to have a successful, modern democratic society without some strong sense of what unites us as citizens,” he is conceding my basic Durkheimian point, that a society without common values is not a viable...

It is my opinion -- and I’ll concede that I am probably not inner-tube floating in the American mainstream here -- that persons of questionable moral scruples can make perfectly good presidents. I will refer to this way of thinking about national leaders as The French Model in honor of François Mitterrand. When the president of France died in 1996 his long-time mistress was in attendance at his funeral. Anne Pingeot’s appearance at his grave (with her child by Mitterrand)...

Robert Bellah writes on the Immanent Frame: I continue, as I reread it, to have the highest opinion of A Secular Age and to believe that it is among the handful of the most important books I have ever read, to the point where The Chronicle of Higher Education speaks of my “effusive” praise. So it was with some surprise that I found there was a point where, if I didn’t entirely differ from Taylor, I had at least some serious questions to raise.

John Bowen writes on the Immanent Frame: Charles Taylor’s remarkable account of developments within Latin Christendom situates contemporary religious or non-religious commitments within what he calls the “immanent frame,” the key to which is the secular condition (his third meaning of secularity), in which belief is an option, and religion a distinct domain. Early in his study, he remarks that such is not the case everywhere: in Muslim societies generally, and for people in...

Charles Taylor writes on the Immanent Frame: Having escaped for a few seconds from the Commission, I had a chance to read many of the very interesting posts to the blog. With many I agree, others not. But there are two points where I obviously failed to communicate what I wanted to say (possibly because that is incoherent, though I hope not).

Elizabeth Hurd headed off a series of entries with “The slipstream of disenchantment and the place of fullness”. “Fullness” is a...