Word: faithe
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...both an avowed skeptic and who was once sentenced to death by Iran's spiritual and political leader, Salman Rushdie is remarkably open toward faith. It's not that he's got it. "I would argue that religion comes from a desire to get to the questions of where do we come from and how shall we live," he said Thursday at the opening of Columbia University's new Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life. "And I would say I don't need religion to answer those questions. Regarding origins, I think you can say [they are all wrong...
...campuses has become a right-wing pinata. In the full understanding that they are swimming against the cultural, if not the academic, stream the folks at the new Institute pulled out Rushdie, who, although he is not one of their faculty members, writes fiction that acknowledges the centrality of faith to culture without the author's pious participation. From his astounding breakthrough work, Midnight's Children, through his current The Enchantress of Florence, he has been obsessed with both formal and informal belief, but from the point of view of a highly-educated Muslim-born sceptic. This potentially flammable combination...
Under the prompting of Gauri Viswanathan, a Columbia professor of English and Comparative literature, Rushdie expressed a deep appreciation for the outward expressions of faith. "I grew up looking out my window at Kings College chapel [the iconic building at Cambridge University, which Rushdie attended]," he says. "And its hard not to believe in the capacity of religion to create beauty" with that sight in his memory. He then expressed wonder that, as a non-Christian secularist, he was invited in 1993 to preach a sermon in that same chapel and did. "There are moments in your life that surprise...
Asked about their faith in our voting system, I suspect a large number of college students would reply positively—at least since this past Tuesday, when Barack Obama prevailed with all the gusto of a hurricane. Yet, were the same question posed eight years ago, responses might have ranged from ambivalent to enraged, with a fair amount of grumbling about Floridians and Ralph Nader.So just how effective is plurality voting in choosing the “right” candidate—the one preferred by the greatest number of people? Pulitzer Prize nominee William Poundstone explores this...
Hunter says he got to know Obama last spring during a long phone conversation. During the call, Hunter made a pitch for the expansion of faith-based partnerships between government and church. Of course, says the preacher, "that was an easy sell, because [Obama] really does want to call forth the American people to do volunteer service." He is aware that Obama's support for faith-based projects currently includes an important post-Bush caveat: programs receiving government money can't restrict their employees to co-religionists. Hunter opposes the restriction but maintains, "If we look hard enough...