Arkiv-Global View

This is the first in a series of interviews about religion that I will conduct for The Stone. The interviewee for this installment is Alvin Plantinga, an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, a former president of both the Society of Christian Philosophers and the American Philosophical Association, and the author, most recently, of “Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism.”

The last few weeks have brought an unusual convergence of voices from both the center and the left about a topic that is typically part of conservative rhetorical territory: poverty and single-parent families.

WITH nearly every American election cycle new spending records are broken. This autumn's midterm elections are nearly nine months away, but already candidates in Kentucky's Senate race have raised $19.4m and spent $7.3m. In the 2012 cycle candidates in the Massachusetts Senate race alone spent over $85m.

Nell'armadio di Martin Schulz c'è uno scheletro che è finito sotto i raggi X di Bruxelles. Il presidente del Parlamento Ue è nel mirino dei parlamentari del Ppe.

L’articolo 20, comma 2, della nostra Costituzione sancisce il diritto di non partecipare, di far parte ma anche di non far parte di alcuna associazione. Certamente esso nasce, all’indomani della caduta della dittatura, dalla preoccupazione di tutelare il cittadino dai regimi totalitari che lo obbligano ad iscriversi a tutte le organizzazioni possibili del Partito-Stato, a cominciare naturalmente da quest’ultimo; Figli della Lupa, Balilla, Komsomol sovietico, Hitlerjugend e via dicendo.

ONE of my earliest memories is of sitting in an idling car with my mom and sister outside a convenience store in Virginia. Dad’s inside, buying cigarettes and scratch-off lottery tickets. Suddenly, a wild-eyed man appears at the driver-side window, yelling about white women and black men and how they don’t belong together. My mother goes feral, blocking his access to us. My father runs out, furious and swearing, before driving us away. I don’t remember what happened next, just a confusing and searing shame about the ugliness that the sight of my family could provoke.

Bob Dylan has always been a chameleon — folk singer in a Huck Finn cap one decade, Christian rocker the next — but his Chrysler Super Bowl ad seemed particularly inappropriate for the man who wrote “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” Before we call him a sellout, though, let’s look at the real story behind a man so adept at mythologizing himself.

Bosnia appeared on Saturday to draw back from three days of unprecedented unrest over unemployment, political paralysis and corruption that for some brought back painful memories of the Balkan country's 1992-95 war.

Small protests were held in the capital, Sarajevo, and in northwestern Bihac, where protesters threw stones at the home of the head of the cantonal government.

But there was little sign of the kind of rioting that has left hundreds of people injured, most of them police officers.

THE turning-point in the euro crisis came when the European Central Bank (ECB) pledged in September 2012 to make if necessary unlimited purchases of government bonds) for countries under siege in the markets, a doctrine it christened “Outright Monetary Transactions” (OMT). The policy gave teeth to Mario Draghi’s earlier “do-whatever-it-takes” vow to save the euro. The bond-purchase pledge proved so successful in routing the bond vigilantes that it has remained on the shelf as a deterrent rather than being fired in anger.

Sure, the religious right is still teamed up with conservative politicians in their battle against gay marriage, abortion, and immigration reform, just as they've been since 1979 when Jerry Falwell birthed the Moral Majority.

But the days of Americans actually heeding what they say is over. And I'd wager this will be the year liberals -- not conservatives -- drive the religious conversation, in the U.S. and abroad.