The rise of the Religious Left in America
By Nick Gier Reader Columnist “Jesus, a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew, called us to preach good news to the poor, the broken, the bruised, and all those who are made to feel unaccepted.” —Rev. William...
Tagged: Nick Gier
Progress on animal rights across the world
By Nick Gier Reader Contributor “If a human four-year-old has what it takes for legal personhood, then a chimpanzee should be able to be a legal person, too.” —Harvard Lecturer Steven Wise Many cracks have appeared...
Martin Luther King was a democratic socialist
By Nick Gier Reader Columnist “Economic justice would require a land where men will not take necessities to give luxuries to the few.” —Martin Luther King, Jr. Many conservatives today, in contrast to 60...
Suicides down 29 percent world-wide; up 30 percent in the U.S.
By Nick Gier Reader Columnist If America gave up its guns, suicides would crash. —The Economist(11/24/18) In 1972 I moved from Denmark, where I had had taught for one year, to Moscow to start...
Smaller lumps of coal in some Christmas stockings this year
By Nick Gier Reader Columnist Every mine safety law is written in a miner’s blood. —Phil Smith, United Mine Workers Initially, I could not find a connection between the 40-year decline in coal consumption...
The 100th anniversary of the end of World War I
By Nick Gier Reader Columnist Their minds were numbed by the shock of peace. —Colonel Thomas Gowenlock, U.S. intelligence officer At 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, the guns fell silent on the battlefields...
Psychedelic Drugs and Mystical Experiences
By Nick Gier Reader Columnist Not a month goes by that I don’t run across yet another misuse of the word “mystical.” I just finished Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci, and I...
Controversial days of Thanksgiving and prayer in early America
By Nick Gier Reader Columnist When you pray, go into your room and shut the door. —Jesus, Matthew 6:6 When the church and state tucked into bed together, it was the church that ended...
Mahatma Gandhi: Love other religions as your own
By Nick Gier Reader Columnist “So precious is a person’s faith in God that we should not harm that. Because God gave birth to all religions.” —St. Francis of Assis “I’ve broadened my Hinduism...
The day Confucius went to the United Nations
By Nick Gier Reader Columnist The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and that they have “the right to life, liberty...
