Dan Brown is not the first to have suggested that Jesus had a sex life-- even Martin Luther said it. So what about the lady, Mary Magdalene?... more

"In 'The Little Mermaid,' Ariel's true identity is the 'Lost Bride,' the Magdalene."
-- Joan Acocella on pop religion in this week's New Yorker

For literature profs of today, Theory is what the Dialectic was to Marxist intellectuals of the past: the key to almost everything... more

"Contemporary literary theory did not emerge in an intellectual and cultural vacuum. The subordination of art to argument and ideas has been a long time in the works. In The Painted Word, a rumination on the state of American painting in the 1970s, Tom Wolfe described an epiphany he had one Sunday morning while reading an article in the New York Times on an exhibit at Yale University. To appreciate contemporary art-- the paintings of Jackson Pollack and still more so his followers-- which to the naked eye appeared indistinguishable from kindergarten splatterings and which provided little immediate pleasure or illumination, it was 'crucial,' Wolfe realized, to have a 'persuasive theory,' a prefabricated conceptual lens to make sense of the work and bring into focus the artist's point. From there it was just a short step to the belief that the critic who supplies the theories is the equal, if not the superior, of the artist who creates the painting."
-- Peter Berkowitz, "Literature in Theory"

The idea that anyone, regardless of learning or class, could "come to Christ" went along with the idea of equal rights in America. William Jennings Bryan... more

"... evangelical Protestantism has always been an integral part of American political history."
-- Michael Kazin, Dissent Magazine, Winter 2006