Let’s Get Metaphysical: A Response to James Miller on Cosmology and Practical Action on the Environment By John J. Thatamanil Photo credit: “Yin Yang” by Sapperlott is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 In a July 16th blog for this site, I suggested that religious believers who are broadly theistic need some compelling account of Read more
Developing a Critical Romanticism By Whitney A. Bauman Modern human thought, philosopher Bruno Latour writes, “takes us far away” from the physical world. It defies connections to matter, as if thought were distinct from the bodies that enable them, and at the same time, it hopes to improve upon that Read more
Why Endangered Species Need Patron Saints By Sarah M. Pike With some of my students, I bent down to fill a cup and drink from Saint Gobnait’s holy well in the woods near Ballyvourney, a small town in southern Ireland. We had approached the site by passing through a metal Read more
Beyond Morality: Climate Crisis as a Global Public Health Crisis By James Miller In his recent blog post for Counterpoint, John J. Thatamanil raised an important question for theists and atheists alike: “Who then will save us?” Discussions of climate emergencies and planetary peril seem inevitably to invoke fundamental soteriological Read more
Animal Tales: Narrating the Cultural and Personal By Jay Johnston I’m thinking about stories. Those told by others, those I tell myself. This is part of my learning to think again after a frenetic, six-month period of “busy work”—the term a wonderful colleague gives to the all—encompassing but vacuous tasks Read more
What, if Anything, Can God Do? Divine Power and the Ecological Crisis By John J. Thatamanil Powerless—that is how many feel when facing the immense ecological challenges of our time. What can anyone do about the whole of India, an entire subcontinent, running out of water? What are we to do Read more
Yes and No to Pride, Fifty Years after Stonewall By Anna Mercedes Fifty years after Stonewall—the historic uprising begun in response to a police raid of a gay bar in New York City that launched the gay rights movement—I can walk into my local department store and find a Gay Read more
A day of encounters, co-organized by the Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture and Counterpoint: Navigating Knowledge On 4 June 2019, Counterpoint: Navigating Knowledge and the Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture (ICOG) co-organized a forum in which artists, scholars, and activists discussed and exchanged new Read more
The Other Side of the Mountain: Art, Ritual, and Climate Change By Susannah Crockford June volunteers to go first. She stands with legs apart in a firm stance, speaking slowly with a fixed gaze, “I am timeless. I am mystery. Humans have taken it upon yourselves to know me, conquer Read more
“Worthy Women”: Sexual Bargaining for a Place in Utopia—or Dystopia? By Dion Forster Some white women in South Africa who are followers of the Worthy Women movement are being encouraged to present themselves as sexual objects to their husbands, give over decision-making to their husbands, and live with diminished freedoms Read more