John Arkelian

Book Review Empire of illusion: the end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle by Chris Hedges Alfred A. Knopf Canada 2009, 240 pages, $29.95

In the mid-1990s, Randall Sullivan stumbled upon claims that the Virgin Mary had been appearing to children in a village in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The subject of

FOR AS LONG as mankind has existed, we have been fascinated by the spectacle of the starry night sky above our heads. It’s a sight

A new book and a film about that book explore the conviction of one of the most extraordinary writers of the 20th century. The conviction

The human psyche is marked by a constant struggle between order and chaos. That internal conflict figured prominently in many of the 300 films at

WHEN JEAN-PAUL Sartre wrote (in 1944) that there was no need for fire, brimstone, stake, and gridiron, insofar as “Hell is other people” [“L’enfer, c’est

Comedian Bill Maher’s satirical barbs are renowned for cleverly skewering our social, political, and cultural foibles. In his documentary film, Religulous, Maher sets his sights

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.” (An old proverb) RELIGION POISONS everything, or, at least that’s the contention of a new crop of

“Amazing love! How can it be / That thou, my God, shouldst die for me!” (Charles Wesley, 1738) If God’s ineffable love for us is

“Make me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence: and take not thy

“Hail, thou ever-blessed morn! Hail, redemption’s happy dawn!” (From a hymn by Edward Caswall, 1858) The release in recent months of a spate of faith-based

“Silver and gold I have none; but such as I have give I thee.” (Acts, 3:6) The German poet, novelist, and playwright Johann Wolfgang von

“But the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the

Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read’st black where I read white.’ (William Blake, c. 1818) The trouble with invoking religion in

“I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all the oppression and shame … See, hear, and am silent.”