Fri, July 08, 2011
How the East came to the West - Book Review
By
Nick Owchar
"American Veda. From Emerson and the Beatles to
Yoga and Meditation — How Indian Spirituality Changed the West." Philip
Goldberg. Harmony. 386 pages. $26.
By Nick Owchar
Long before the Fab Four embraced the East, there were the Fab
Three — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman.
Philip Goldberg’s American Veda
is an engaging survey of why, starting with these three venerable
American thinkers, the flowers of Eastern practices have thrived in
Western soil.
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Please see HERE to read the rest of the review
Labels:
Nick Owchar
Philip Goldberg
Indian spirituality
"American Veda" Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Walt Whitman
religion
America
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Fri, December 24, 2010
A Good Year For God
By
Chris Patten
LONDON – It’s been a better year for God. After withering literary
assaults on the Almighty from the Oxford academic Richard Dawkins, the
essayist Christopher Hitchens, and others, believers have hit back.
Best of all has been The Case for God by the brilliant
religion writer Karen Armstrong. More important still is the news that
more people (certainly in Britain) are going to Christian churches of
all denominations. Moreover, the Pope made a very successful visit to
Britain in September. We know already about heavy attendance at the
country’s mosques.
At this time of year, of course, many Christians who are not regular
churchgoers attend the Nativity services. Carols, church bells, and
mangers are still at the heart of mid-winter festivities, alongside the
consumer binge. This year, however, the “big spend” in Europe may have
been inhibited by the big winter freeze and the big austerity programs
across most of the continent.
Even in the most Godless households, most children in Western
societies probably know the details of the Christmas story. The
travelers who can find no room at the inn. The birth of a baby in the
stables. The arrival of the wise men bearing gifts of gold,
frankincense, and myrrh.
We learn about all this at the same time as we are told about Father
Christmas, his Lapland reindeers, and his sacks full of presents. We
rapidly lose our belief in that winter myth. But we tend to retain into
adulthood the same views of God that we formed in childhood. An old man
with a long beard watches over us, and most of us retain a pretty
literal opinion of the stories about his Son told in the Bible’s New
Testament.
It is this God that atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens attack. And,
with such a target, it is not very difficult to poke holes and pile on
the ridicule. Leave aside the fact that you can make an even stronger
case against Godlessness – remember the atrocities of atheist
totalitarians in the twentieth century – and consider the assault on
those whose commitment to literal interpretations of religious texts
means that they deny science and reason. To them the world was made in
six days; evolution is a fanciful tale.
Those of us who think that science and religion dwell in different
domains, and who recall that Socrates argued that science did not teach
you about morality or meaning, find that our case is undermined by the
literalists and fundamentalists in every religion...
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A very thoughtful - and Urantian (whether he knows it or not) - take on the realities of religion in modern America. This is one worth reading...please click HERE to access the entire article.
How do we minister to this confused world? Visit www.Truthbook.com for some refreshment and inspiration... here is our page of Spiritual Studies...be grateful for the sanity that we find in The Urantia Book
Labels:
religion
America
God
atheism
fundamentalism
literalism
Bible
The Urantia Book
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Mon, October 11, 2010
God in America: A Question of Religious Liberty (VIDEO)
By
Marilyn Mellowes
On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus thrust the banner of the
Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella into the sands of the island he
named San Salvador, or "Holy Savior," claiming the territory for Spain
and announcing that henceforth its people would be Spanish subjects.
Observing the native inhabitants, Columbus wrote: "I think they can
easily be made Christians."
Thus began the tangled embrace between religion and politics in the
New World, a story of conquest and conversion, faith and power,
repentance and renewal that has continued for more than 500 years. The
dynamic intersection of religion and political life in America is the
subject of the forthcoming six-hour series God in America that
premiers on Columbus Day, October 11 at 9:00 PM on PBS stations across
the country. Night One of the series explores how religion imprinted
America with a distinctive Protestant stamp and how religious liberty
proved noble in principle but messy in practice.
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Please click on "external source" for the complete article, including a video taste of what this series is all about...
And if you click HERE, you can be a part of the PBS "God in America" Faithbook. It is an ideal place to share your Urantian philosophy and teachings with the world...
Labels:
God
America
faith
religion
PBS
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