Religious Poetry Workshop
Tomorrow marks the start of the Princeton Workshop on Chinese Religious Poetry, organized by myself and Jason Protass. Despite what the poster says, all are welcome to come, even without […]
Christianity
Interview with Calvin College
A person from the PR office of my undergraduate institution, Calvin College, recently interviewed me about what I’m doing now, nine years after graduating. Click here, or on the picture […]
Call for Papers: Workshop on Chinese Religious Poetry
For the past few months, I have been co-organizing a workshop with Jason Protass (Brown University) on the intersections between poetry and religion in China. It will take place at […]
Harold Bloom Has Gone Senile
I once called Harold Bloom “an American Nietzschean ventriloquist speaking through the dummy of William Blake’s corpse, a rhetorician almost as eloquent and just as evil as Milton’s Satan.” I […]
Problems of the “Evolutionary Tree of Religion”
On social media sites, I have seen the following chart making the rounds: (original link: https://a248.e.akamai.net/media.pinterest.com.s3.amazonaws.com/originals/d8/ec/c0/d8ecc07e906127bf0fd4623504b7eca8.jpg) This is a very pleasing visualization, but I find many, may problems with it. Most importantly, […]
The Buddhist Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
I was reading an introductory book on Tibetan history for a class on Dūnhuáng 敦煌 manuscripts and came across a rather interesting paragraph: — The strong partnership between Buddhist monastics and merchants […]
“For a Tear is an Intellectual Thing”: William Blake against the Deists
William Blake has probably had a greater influence on me than any other person who has ever lived, save the authors of the Bible. His visions are unparalleled in their […]
The Wisdom Books
Book Review The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter Robert Alter, well known for his translations of The David Story (I and II Samuel), The […]
Religion of Secularism
While I’ve not read The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now, I just came across a review of it in the New Yorker by book critic James […]
The Jesus Sutras
Book Review The Jesus Sutras by Martin Palmer First off, I’d like to say that the subject here is fascinating: in the last hundred years, it’s come to light that […]