The prevailing view of the cultural aspect of globalization is that of a massive process of Westernization. It is producing a synthetic international culture. On the popular level it is sometimes called “McWorld” (a term felicitously coined by Benjamin Barber), sometimes “airport culture”. Here the world dances to American music, eats American fast food, affirms […]

It’s been one disaster after another this week in Pakistan.  The WikiLeaks documents opened raw wounds in Pakistan’s agonizing relationship with the United States.  A plane crash on the outskirts of the capital of Islamabad killed 152 people.  UK Prime Minister David Cameron ostentatiously attacked Pakistan for exporting terror and ‘looking both ways’ in the […]

I’m not much good at timing.  I was visiting Jordan on a lecture tour when the Israelis assassinated Hamas founder Sheikh Yassin.  Amman closed down and much of my program had to be canceled; Americans weren’t welcome on campuses where student groups were mourning the sheikh and vowing revenge.  I was in Indonesia when the […]

On June 22, 2010, a crowd of some 35,000 Evangelical Christians gathered in a football stadium in Manaus, the Brazilian city located in the heart of the Amazonian rainforest. They met about two hours after Brazil beat Ivory Coast at the World Cup.  But the purpose of the rally was only partly to celebrate this […]

Religion is, almost by definition, a rejection of tragedy in favor of comedy. Tragedy occurs in the context of an unredeemed, perhaps unredeemable world. The clown is a figure of redemption.

During the next two weeks I’ll be visiting Pakistan at the invitation of the US Embassy there.  I won’t be there to toe the government line; from time to time US diplomats abroad call on people from many different points of view and walks of life to give overseas audiences a chance to encounter Americans […]

I was waiting to name my blog until the White House came up with a new name for the Conflict Formerly Known As The Global War On Terror (COFKATGWOT); I’ve pretty much given up on that now.  We are fighting an anonymous war with unspecified goals against Those Who Cannot Be Named and that’s the […]

Israel was established as both a democratic and a Jewish state. Both qualities continue to be real enough. But there have been increasing tensions between these two definitions of the state, and some (in Israel and outside it) have questioned whether there is not an inherent contradiction that cannot be resolved—Israel can be one or […]

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? asked the Roman satirist Juvenal: Who will watch the guards?  In our society, we have another question to ask:  Who will reform the reformers?As the country sweltered under the hottest three months since record keeping began, as the gushing oil spill in the Gulf riveted the country’s attention on the environment […]

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and symbolic (though in actuality rather powerless) leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, is by all accounts a very pleasant individual.  He has been trying valiantly to keep within the sprawling Anglican fold, estimated to be between 70-80 million adherents worldwide, the progressives and traditionalists who have been in […]