Theolog

Peculiar grace

By Sarah S. Howell

For almost a year now, I have been corresponding regularly with William Barnes (“Tim”), prisoner #0020590 at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. Tim is on Death Row for the 1990 murder of two people.

Tim converted to Islam while in prison and we converse often about his religion and mine. Tim is not afraid to share his faith or to ask pointed questions about Christianity. Once he asked how Jesus could be born of Mary and also have in him the fullness of God. Tim couldn’t make sense of this, and it became my task to explain the Christian belief in the humanity and divinity of Christ. As a religion student, I am used to using and hearing words like “eschatological” and “soteriology”: to have to delineate the fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith is humbling.

Jesus and jihad

By Jason Byassee

Marilynne Robinson is perhaps the most widely read theologian presently working in America. Of course she is not an academic theologian. But she is a serious reader of Calvin and reckoner with the divine. Undoubtedly more people have read her Pulitzer-winning novel Gilead and her astonishing review of Richard Dawkins in Harpers (November 2006) than have read any writer currently working in the theological academy. She is scathingly impatient both with hasty dismissals of religion (Darwinism is a favorite bête noir for her) and with hasty impositions of it (by, say, evangelicals).

Living goddesses

What are the limits of cultural relativism? In Nepal, the supreme court is asking whether girls’ rights are violated by the Hindu/Buddhist tradition of choosing one of them, selected at age four or five, to become a virgin goddess. In order to qualify, a girl must possess 32 physical “perfections,” including excellent health, a sturdy body, unblemished skin, very black hair and eyes, attractive hands and feet, small genitalia, a clear voice, no body odor and all her teeth. Oh—and her horoscope must jibe with that of the king. See Dean Peerman's exploration of the issue.