Christianity « The Accidental Theologist

The Virginity Test

Posted on June 2, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

Sometimes I wonder what year it is. 2011, or 1911? Item: former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s legal team is about to spend at least half a million dollars trying to discredit the immigrant chambermaid who accused him of rape and sexual assault. Presumably, they’ll try to use her sexual history against her. After all, she’s [...]

Filed under: Christianity, feminism, Islam, Middle East | Tagged: Cave of Forgotten Dreams, DSK, Egypt, fertility, Great Britain, Khadija, Muhammad, rape, sexuality, UK, virgin forest, Virgin Mary, virginity tests, Werner Herzog, women | 14 Comments »

Anti-Sleaze

Posted on May 29, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

Is Reza Aslan considering a run for political office? This recent TEDx talk sure sounds like it. Aslan wrote the best-selling ‘No God But God,‘ by far the most readable introduction to the history of Islam, and his recent anthology of 20th-century Middle East literature, ‘Tablet & Pen,’ is a fixture on my bedside table. [...]

Filed under: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, US politics | Tagged: American Muslims, Catholics, diversity, Islamophobia, Jews, No God But God, Reza Aslan, Tablet & Pen, TEDxConejo | 1 Comment »

Sleaze

Posted on May 27, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

File this under Annals of Ugliness. And have paper towels handy to wipe off the sleaze if you watch it. It’s Dutch über-racist Geert Wilders at a ‘Christian’ megachurch in Nashville, TN, getting standing O’s for tripe like “Muhammad was a terrorist worse than Bin Laden ever was” and “If Jerusalem falls, Nashville falls.” Which [...]

Filed under: Christianity, Islam, ugliness | Tagged: Bin Laden, Cornerstone Church, Geert Wilders, Harold Camping, Islamophobia, Israel, Jerusalem, Muhammad, Nashville, racism | 3 Comments »

Left Behind

Posted on May 21, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

Happy Rapture Day, all!

Filed under: absurd, Christianity, messianism | Tagged: countdown, empty shoes, Rapture | 7 Comments »

Countdown to Rapture

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

Is this the face of rapture? One look at a photo of radio preacher Harold Camping and it’s easy to see why, at 90, he thinks the end of the world is nigh. Very nigh. In eight days time, to be precise: May 21. At 6 pm. (That’s local time wherever you are, which I [...]

Filed under: absurd, Christianity, fundamentalism | Tagged: apocalypse, cashing in, end of the world, Harold Camping, judgment day, May 21, Mayan calendar, Rapture, Save the Date, second coming | 4 Comments »

Soul Brothers: The Crackpot Pastor and the Taliban

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

I’ve been asked what I’d do about the crackpot pastor Terry Jones, the Quran-burning Florida redneck who keeps a poster of Mel Gibson’s ‘Braveheart’ in his office for “spiritual sustenance.” It would be wonderful to just laugh, but last week Jones’ idiocy set off the reciprocal idiocy of riots in Afghanistan that have so far [...]

Filed under: Christianity, fundamentalism, Islam | Tagged: Afghanistan, Ahmed Abaza, Asif Ali Zardawi, Hamid Kharzai, Huis Clos, Jean-Paul Sartre, Koran burning, Mel Gibson, No Exit, Pakistan, Quran, Terry Jones | 16 Comments »

The 50-Minute Video

Posted on March 12, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

I know you probably don’t have time for this long a video, but for the record, here’s my February 19 keynote speech at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, MI — on fundamentalism, stereotyping, and (with suitably Jewish agnostic chutzpah) religion, as well as on the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia and the effect [...]

Filed under: Christianity, fundamentalism, Islam, Judaism | Tagged: After the Prophet, Bahrain, Deuteronomy, Egypt, gospels, highlighter version, Islamophobia, Kaddish, Karbala, Libya, Nick Kristof, nutshell syndrome, Peter King, Quran, Roger Cohen, St Paul, stereotypes, Tariq Ramadan, terrorism, Tunisia, Yemen, zealotry | 47 Comments »

Anti-Semitism = Islamophobia

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

This past weekend, I spoke to a Hadassah meeting – the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. The subject, of my choosing, was “What’s a ‘nice Jewish girl’ doing writing so much about Islam?” The easy answer to the question I’d self-imposed was “Why not?” A perfectly reasonable answer, perhaps, but not with bigots like Peter [...]

Filed under: Christianity, fundamentalism, Islam, Judaism | Tagged: 9/11, American Jews, American Muslims, anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Bible, bigotry, Hadassah, Islamophobia, Martin Niemoller, Peter King, prejudice, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Quran, radicalization, stereotypes, West Bank | 32 Comments »

Silent Night

Posted on December 24, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

Filed under: art, Christianity | Tagged: Christmas Eve, les mains liees, peace, Picasso | Leave a Comment »

Hellfire at Christmas?

Posted on December 21, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

I know this is kind of absurd right now. With half the world gearing up for Christmas, why am I puzzling away at hellfire? To which I can only say, blame Al. (He dubbed himself Not Buying on the comments thread of the TEDx video talk I gave, then Fred in a subsequent email exchange, [...]

Filed under: Christianity, fundamentalism, Islam, Judaism | Tagged: "the hellfire penalty", belief, disbelief, hell, nihilism, suicide bombings, terrorism | 30 Comments »

The Accidental Theologist

Recently on AT

Email Subscription

Recommended Sites