Search results for ""The Believer""

Immediately after the Gospels, the New Testament takes up the history of the early Christian Church, describing the works of the twelve disciples, and introducing Paul, the man whose influence on the history of Christianity is beyond calculation. Teacher, preacher, conciliator, diplomat, theologian, rule giver, consoler, and martyr, his life and writings became foundations for Christianity. Paul inspired a vast, serious, and intelligent literature that seeks to recapture his meaning, his thinking, and his purpose. In his letters to early Christian communities, Paul gave much practical advice about organization and orthodoxy. These treated the early Christian communities as something more than a group of people who believed in the same faith: they were people bound together by a common spirit unknown before. The significance of that common spirit occupied the greatest of Christian theologians from Athanasius and Augustine through Luther and Calvin. In The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle Albert Schweitzer goes against Luther and the Protestant tradition to look at what Paul actually writes in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians: an emphasis upon the personal experience of the believer with the divine. Paul's mysticism was not like the mysticism elsewhere described as a soul being at one with God. In the mysticism he felt and encouraged, there is no loss of self but an enriching of it; no erasure of time or place but a comprehension of how time and place fit within the eternal. Schweitzer writes that Paul's mysticism is especially profound, liberating, and precise. Typical of Schweitzer, he introduces readers to his point of view at once, then describes in detail how he came to it, its scholarly antecedents, what its implications are, what objections have been raised, and why all of this matters. To students of the New Testament, this book opens up Paul by presenting him as offering an entirely new kind of mysticism, necessarily and exclusively Christian. "There is at least one other point that Albert Schweitzer scores here...The hard-won recognition that divine authority and human freedom ultimately cannot be in conflict must never be taken for granted, and the irony that the thought of Paul has repeatedly been invoked to undo that recognition truly does make this insight one of 'the permanent elements. '"-from the Introduction

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Today's discussions on Islam and the place religion should have in society often lead to questions about the Shari'a - Islamic law. Those who work for a political role for Islam demand that the Shari'a must be applied in their country, while those critical of Islam use the law as proof of its 'medieval' character. Islam is sometimes, not quite justly, called a 'religion of rules', and the rules of Islam are the Shari'a. But it is often hard to establish the exact nature of this law in more practical terms. Asking those who favour it or those who oppose it may only lead to greater confusion. But a rule and its exact opposite can both be said to be 'what the Shari'a says' and what God demands of the believer. It may even be questioned if there is any Shari'a at all in the work-a-day world, or whether it is just an ethical ideal, or a body whose secrets are known only to God. At the same time people may be stoned or mutilated in the name of this law. The key to understanding Shari'a is the concept of 'religious law', a term which might seem contradictory. 'Religion' is faith in a non-material force of some kind, and something we consider internal to the human soul. 'Law', on the other hand, is external to us, established by society in order to regulate the material needs of the community. The contrast between 'religion' and 'law' has been continuous throughout Muslim history. Islamic law has always existed in a tension between these two forces: God, who gave the law, and the state - the 'sultan' - representing society and implementing the law. This tension and dynamic have created a very particular history for the law - in how it was formulated and by whom, in its theoretical basis and its actual rules, and in how it was practised in historical reality from the time of its formation till today. That is the main theme of the book. Knut S. Vikor aims in this book to introduce the development and practice of Islamic law to a wide readership: students, lawyers and the growing number of those interested in Islamic civilisation. He summarises the main concepts of Islamic jurisprudence, discusses debates concerning the historicity of Islamic sources of dogma and the dating of early Islamic law; describes the classic practice of the law, in the formulation of legal rules and practice in the courts; and sets out various substantive legal rules, on such vital matters as the family and economic activity.

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The Los Angeles Review of Books launched in April of 2011 as a humble Tumblr, with a 2600-word essay by Ben Ehrenreich entitled "The Death of the Book." The gesture was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but we meant it to be provocative, and to ask a genuine question: Was the book dying? Was the internet killing it? Or were we simply entering a new era, a new publishing ecosystem, where different media could coexist? Since then, we've been enormously gratified by the response that LARB has generated from readers, writers, academics, editors, publishers. We are a community of writers, critics, journalists, artists, filmmakers, and scholars dedicated to promoting and disseminating the best that is thought and written, with an enduring commitment to the intellectual rigor, the incisiveness, and the power of the written word.Today, we've created a new institution for writers and readers that is unlike anything else on the web. Our new LARB Quarterly Journal reflects the best that this institution has to bring to readers all over the world. One question these people have continually asked us, though, is: When are you going to put out a print edition? Even though we've been (and remain) committed to the internet as both a space of conversation and a place of commerce, we've always wanted to have something physical, tangible, to be able to show for our work. We never really believed that books would die, or magazines either. The LARB website currently publishes a minimum of two rigorously edited pieces a day, and we've cultivated a stable of regular contributors, both eminent (Jane Smiley, Mike Davis, Jonathan Lethem) and emerging (Jenny Hendrix, Colin Dickey, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah). We've found our way to a certain tone that readers expect and enjoy: looser and more eclectic than our namesakes the New York and London Review of Books, grounded in literature but open to all varieties of cultural experience, far from the New York publishing hothouse atmosphere but not myopically focused on L.A. either. The new LARB print quarterly will build on the best aspects of the current website. As we do now, we'll publish book reviews that strive to do something more than recommend or discourage a purchase; we're most interested in pieces that push the form of the book review into other genres, such as memoir, polemic, or short story. We are excited to explore the possibilities of this new format, and feel confident that the audience we've attracted over the past two years on the web will follow us. We know that our peers at Harper's, Bookforum, n+1, The Believer, and the New York and London Review of Books -- all of whom have expressed support and goodwill for this latest venture -- welcome a new voice from the West, as will subscribers. The long form literary and cultural arts review is alive and well, and now, has a new home in Los Angeles.

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"In Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, Roy Scranton draws on his experiences in Iraq to confront the grim realities of climate change. The result is a fierce and provocative book."--Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History "Roy Scranton's Learning to Die in the Anthropocene presents, without extraneous bullshit, what we must do to survive on Earth. It's a powerful, useful, and ultimately hopeful book that more than any other I've read has the ability to change people's minds and create change. For me, it crystallizes and expresses what I've been thinking about and trying to get a grasp on. The economical way it does so, with such clarity, sets the book apart from most others on the subject."--Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy "Roy Scranton lucidly articulates the depth of the climate crisis with an honesty that is all too rare, then calls for a reimagined humanism that will help us meet our stormy future with as much decency as we can muster. While I don't share his conclusions about the potential for social movements to drive ambitious mitigation, this is a wise and important challenge from an elegant writer and original thinker. A critical intervention."--Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate "Concise, elegant, erudite, heartfelt & wise."--Amitav Ghosh, author of Flood of Fire "War veteran and journalist Roy Scranton combines memoir, philosophy, and science writing to craft one of the definitive documents of the modern era."--The Believer Best Books of 2015 Coming home from the war in Iraq, US Army private Roy Scranton thought he'd left the world of strife behind. Then he watched as new calamities struck America, heralding a threat far more dangerous than ISIS or Al Qaeda: Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, megadrought--the shock and awe of global warming. Our world is changing. Rising seas, spiking temperatures, and extreme weather imperil global infrastructure, crops, and water supplies. Conflict, famine, plagues, and riots menace from every quarter. From war-stricken Baghdad to the melting Arctic, human-caused climate change poses a danger not only to political and economic stability, but to civilization itself ...and to what it means to be human. Our greatest enemy, it turns out, is ourselves. The warmer, wetter, more chaotic world we now live in--the Anthropocene--demands a radical new vision of human life. In this bracing response to climate change, Roy Scranton combines memoir, reportage, philosophy, and Zen wisdom to explore what it means to be human in a rapidly evolving world, taking readers on a journey through street protests, the latest findings of earth scientists, a historic UN summit, millennia of geological history, and the persistent vitality of ancient literature. Expanding on his influential New York Times essay (the #1 most-emailed article the day it appeared, and selected for Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014), Scranton responds to the existential problem of global warming by arguing that in order to survive, we must come to terms with our mortality. Plato argued that to philosophize is to learn to die. If that's true, says Scranton, then we have entered humanity's most philosophical age--for this is precisely the problem of the Anthropocene. The trouble now is that we must learn to die not as individuals, but as a civilization. Roy Scranton has published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Boston Review, and Theory and Event, and has been interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air, among other media.

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Winner of the 2020 PEN Open Book AwardBest of 2019: Nonfiction - Entropy MagazineA memoir and book of mourning, a grandson’s attempt to reconcile his own uncontested citizenship with his grandfather’s lifelong struggle.Award-winning poet Brandon Shimoda has crafted a lyrical portrait of his paternal grandfather, Midori Shimoda, whose life—child migrant, talented photographer, suspected enemy alien and spy, desert wanderer, American citizen—mirrors the arc of Japanese America in the twentieth century. In a series of pilgrimages, Shimoda records the search to find his grandfather, and unfolds, in the process, a moving elegy on memory and forgetting.Praise for The Grave on the Wall:"Shimoda brings his poetic lyricism to this moving and elegant memoir, the structure of which reflects the fragmentation of memories. … It is at once wistful and devastating to see Midori's life come full circle … In between is a life with tragedy, love, and the horrors unleashed by the atomic bomb."—Booklist, starred review"In a weaving meditation, Brandon Shimoda pens an elegant eulogy for his grandfather Midori, yet also for the living, we who survive on the margins of graveyards and rituals of our own making."—Karen Tei Yamashita, author of Letters to Memory"Sometimes a work of art functions as a dream. At other times, a work of art functions as a conscience. In the tradition of Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo, Brandon Shimoda's The Grave on the Wall is both. It is also the type of fragmented reckoning only America could instigate."—Myriam Gurba, author of Mean“Within this haunted sepulcher built out of silence, loss, and grief—its walls shadowed by the traumas of racial oppression and violence—a green river lined with peach trees flows beneath a bridge that leads back to the grandson."—Jeffrey Yang, author of Hey, Marfa: Poems"It is part dream, part memory, part forgetting, part identity. It is a remarkable exploration of how citizenship is forged by the brutal US imperial forces—through slave labor, forced detention, indiscriminate bombing, historical amnesia and wall. If someone asked me, Where are you from? I would answer, From The Grave on the Wall."—Don Mee Choi, author of Hardly War"Shimoda intercedes into the absences, gaps and interstices of the present and delves the presence of mystery. This mystery is part of each of us. Shimoda outlines that mystery in silence and silhouette, in objects left behind at site-specific travels to Japan and in the disparate facts of his grandpa’s FBI file. Gratitude to Brandon Shimoda for taking on the mystery which only literature accepts as the basic challenge."—Sesshu Foster, author of City of the Future"Shimoda is a mystic writer … He puts what breaches itself (always) onto the page, so that the act of writing becomes akin to paper-making: an attention to fibers, coagulation, texture and the water-fire mixtures that signal irreversible alteration or change. … he has written a book that touches the bottom of my own soul."—Bhanu Kapil, author of Ban en Banlieue"The Grave on the Wall is a passage of aching nostalgia and relentless assembly out of which something more important than objective truth is conjured—a ritual frisson, a veracity of spirit. I am grateful to have traveled along.”—Trisha Low, The Believer"It's not just a document from which Brandon Shimoda untangles the dead, but it's a portal through which the ghosts can show themselves to him. To exchange that kind of attention between the living and the dead is love."—Zachary Schomburg, Willamette Week

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