Creation of Adam (detail), Sistine Chapel Ceiling, by Michelangelo, c. 1508–1512. Vatican City, Rome, Italy.

Creation of Adam (detail), Sistine Chapel ceiling, by Michelangelo, c. 1508–12. Vatican City, Rome, Italy.

Religion

Volume III, Number 1 | winter 2010

Purchase

Preamble

Mandates of Heaven

By Lewis H. Lapham

Finding religion in the strangest of places.

More

The garden of Eden with the Fall of Man, by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, c. 1615. Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands.

The Original Sin

By Francine Prose

Where misogyny comes from—and why it endures.

More

Map

Sacred Ground

Houses of the gods and sites of creation.

View

c. 1725 | Étrépigny

Iniquity

The final testament of a French priest.More

819 | Chang’an

Remonstrance

Han Yu condemns the barbarism of Buddhism.More

c. 1623 | London

Resurrection

John Donne’s hymn to God.More

Charts & Graphs

Singing His Praises

Religious bands and a sampling of their albums, song titles, and lyrics.

View

Photograph of American writer Francine Prose.

Black and white photograph of Friedrich Nietzsche with a huge mustache.

Lewis Lapham at his desk

Sculpture bust of Greek historian Herodotus.

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.

—Jean Rostand, 1939

Drawing of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.

British philosopher, logician, and social critic Bertrand Russell.

Søren Kierkegaard & Bertrand Russell

Purchase

Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

Lapham’s Quarterly Is on Hiatus

By Lapham’s Quarterly

But the American Agora Foundation is already planning for the future. More

The Colosseum, attributed to Robert Eaton, c. 1855.

DÉjÀ Vu

Monumental Mistakes

2023:

Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.

c. 1850:

Thompson of Sunderland makes his mark on Pompey’s pillar.

More

Terracotta funerary plaque, Greek, Attic, c. 520 BC.

The World in Time

Robert D. Kaplan

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power. More

play
pause

00:00

00:00