Pundit Wire

Category Archives: Religion

Wagner’s Dead Elephant

By Hal Gordon | Published: May 14, 2013

Richard Wagner Richard Wagner, the great German composer, was born two hundred years ago on May 22, 1813. Wagner was one of the most stupendous musical geniuses who ever lived. He was also a notorious anti-Semite. Even on his two hundredth birthday, there is no ignoring the dead elephant in his living room.

At the same time, to say that Wagner was an anti-Semite, and to say no more than that, is too simple. It is too simple because Wagner was very much a self-contradictory genius, and his contradictions extended to his attitude toward Jewish people.

In other words, Wagner was an anti-Semite, but… And the but was not inconsequential.

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“Thou shalt not disapprove of gay marriage…”

By Hal Gordon | Published: May 8, 2013

GayMarriage_thumb “How a minority, reaching majority, seizing authority, hates a minority!”
— Leonard H. Robbins

A florist in Washington State won’t provide floral arrangements for a gay wedding, citing her “relationship with Jesus Christ.” In response, the state’s attorney general has slapped a $2000 consumer protection lawsuit against the lady, alleging a violation of the state’s antidiscrimination laws. And the American Civil Liberties Union has threatened to weigh in with lawsuit on behalf of the gay couple that was refused service.

A simple case of discrimination? Think again.

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Revealing Heaven

By Hal Gordon | Published: April 4, 2013

sky_thumb “If a man die, shall he live again?”– Job 14:14

How seriously should we take so-called “near-death” experiences?

Very seriously indeed, says Fr. John Price, an Episcopal priest who has talked to more than 200 “returnees” over the past forty years, and has researched the stories of many more. Fr. Price, whom I am privileged to know personally, has distilled his findings into a startling new book called, Revealing Heaven: The Christian Case for Near-Death Experiences.

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Francis I–Another John XXIII?

By Hal Gordon | Published: March 15, 2013

Pope Francis I I have to admit that I have enjoyed reading about the first actions of the new pope: his paying his own hotel bill; his giving his security detail the slip in order to make a private visit to a church; his preference for simple vestments, his choice of Francis as his pontifical name and so on. It gave me a warm glow of nostalgia as I remembered the accession of Pope John XXIII over fifty years ago.

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Lincoln’s Last Words

By Hal Gordon | Published: February 11, 2013

Lincoln Abraham Lincoln is generally regarded as this country’s greatest president. It follows, then, that his last words, if we but knew what they were, would be of compelling interest—not merely to historians, but to all Americans.

As it happens, we do know what Lincoln’s last words were. In an interview in 1882, Mary Lincoln, the president’s widow, confided that in the box at Ford’s Theatre, scant seconds before John Wilkes Booth fired the fatal Derringer ball into her husband’s brain, Lincoln had turned to her and whispered: “We will visit the Holy Land and see those places hallowed by the footsteps of the Savior.” And then: “There is no place I so much desire to see as Jerusalem.”

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The Atheist at the Funeral

By Hal Gordon | Published: February 8, 2013

Robert Ingersoll Pollsters tell us that 20 percent of Americans today are secularists—that is, they are atheist, agnostic or unaffiliated with a religion. According to author and atheist Susan Jacoby, the reason why secularists don’t wield an influence commensurate with their numbers is their own reluctance to speak out, “particularly at moments of high drama and emotion,” such as the massacre of the schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut.

Ms. Jacoby expanded on this theme in an opinion piece published last month in the New York Times. “It is vital,” she said, “to show that there are indeed atheists in foxholes, and wherever else human beings suffer and die.” In particular, she suggested that today’s atheists should emulate Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), the great 19th Century skeptic and freethinker, who frequently delivered secular eulogies at funerals.

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