American politicians who dwell on American exceptionalism only dishonor us by suggesting we play dumb to our past. Jay Parini Read Quote
Indeed, we might all forget where we have been if we didn’t have somebody to assemble and arrange the little blocks called facts from which history is constructed, artfully or less so. Jay Parini Read Quote
Language kills, and inflamed rhetoric of the kind that spews almost daily from the lips of Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and others running for public office in this country should be condemned. Jay Parini Read Quote
A long-running argument exists over whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. In my view, they certainly do. Jay Parini Read Quote
The ancient Greeks and Romans were comfortable with any number of deities and were quite open to allowing conquered nations to continue to worship in whatever ways they saw fit, as long as they didn’t mind having an emperor who required taxes and tributes. Jay Parini Read Quote
God is God, but he has various names in different languages, and each strand of monotheistic religion has multiple ways of describing the godhead. Jay Parini Read Quote
Fundamentalism takes different forms in different religions, but there is one striking similarity in all forms of fundamentalist thought. Each wishes dearly to hold in check all varieties of ‘modern’ or ‘decadent’ thinking. Jay Parini Read Quote
I argue that the resurrection was not the Great Resuscitation. It was a total transformation. I just don’t accept the black-and-white thinking that goes along with needing to regard the gospels are literally true. Jay Parini Read Quote
I’ve spent a good deal of time in the Middle East over the years, lecturing at universities in places like Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and Morocco. Jay Parini Read Quote
It’s probably incorrect to say that Islam is ‘a religion of peace,’ as some politicians like to say. Overstatements like that don’t clarify anything. Jay Parini Read Quote
