Theodicy

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God and Forgiveness on the Bathroom Floor: Immaculee Ilibagiza and the Rwandan Genocide

Some books are so powerful, so disturbing, I almost hesitates to recommend them or pass along a copy to a friend. Left to Tell, a spiritual autobiography written by a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, is one such book. A friend who read it at her church lent it to me, and the book spent […]

17Jun2008 | Andrea Useem | 3 comments | Continued
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The Moral Lives of Foreign Correspondents

Visiting a slum in Nairobi is like walking through a haunted house: a horror around every corner. You have to step carefully to avoid slipping into the open sewers. You see and hear and smell that people are living in situations very close to hell on earth. It’s hard to fight the overwhelming urge to […]

27Aug2007 | Andrea Useem | 0 comments | Continued
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Finding God on Cormac McCarthy’s “Road”

Matthew Lickona, the 30-something Catholic traditionalist and author, wrote in his 2006 book, Swimming with Scapulars, that looking at the stars and imagining the vast sweep of dark universe beyond sometimes depressed him. Did God’s law, so tailored for human existence, really apply out there?
Reading Cormac McCarthy’s latest novel, The Road, gives the believing reader […]

16Jul2007 | Andrea Useem | 0 comments | Continued
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Book: Why Horror Attracts, and How We Memorialize It

Bob Abernethy, founder and host of PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, and co-editor William Bole have compiled 66 of the show’s most interesting interviews in “The Life of Meaning: Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World,” published this month by Seven Stories Press. Compressed from lengthy Q+As into “spoken essay” form, the brief chapters offer short […]

23Apr2007 | Andrea Useem | 0 comments | Continued
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“We Need the Word ‘Evil,’” Says Religion Scholar

Jennifer Geddes, associate professor of religious studies and director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, has written extensively on the subject of evil. ReligionWriter spoke with her this morning about using the term “evil” to describe the Virginia Tech shooter.
ReligionWriter: What does the word “evil” mean?
Jennifer Geddes: I […]

18Apr2007 | Andrea Useem | 3 comments | Continued
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Scholar on VTech Tragedy: Theodicy Has Many Faces

Reporting on a tragedy follows a set trajectory, and many reporters today are writing “what sense can we make of it?” stories, often using faith leaders as sources. Over the coming week, the otherwise arcane theological term “theodicy” will crop up in news stories across the country.
To take a deeper look at theodicy, ReligionWriter spoke […]

17Apr2007 | Andrea Useem | 0 comments | Continued
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