Over at Slate, Rob Blackhurst examines the secrets to Rick Warren’s success. Warren helms one of the largest churches in the US and has sold upwards of 50 million books. The secret to Warren’s scrivener success? Brevity:
“There’s not a new idea in The Purpose Driven Life that hasn’t been said in 2,000 years of history. [...]
Tags:brevity·Rick Warrren·Saddleback Church·The Purpose Driven Life·writing
Humans have been engaging with the supernatural for at least 50,000 years and perhaps much longer. Because humans have been writing for less than 5,000 years, this means that some 45,000 years of religious history reveals itself to us only through the archaeological record. For a long period of time, archaeologists were reluctant to investigate [...]
Tags:archaeology·burials·domestic·grave goods·Higgs·Jarman·monuments·neolithic·Richard Bradley·ritual·ritualization·sacred·shrines·soul·soul beliefs·writing
Nearly 5,500 years ago or about 3,500 BCE, the Sumerians began writing about supernatural matters; in a sense, this marks the origin of what most people today understand as “religion.” This relatively modern and provincially Western understanding of religion is on full display in Paul Raushenbush’s article introducing HuffPo Religion’s new series on religious texts [...]
Tags:Bhagavad Gita·books·Buddhist·category of religion·Christian presuppositions·doctrinal·Edward Said·essentializing·Harvey Whitehouse·Hindu·imagistic·Jonathan Z. Smith·non-written traditions·orientalism·Paul Raushenbush·religion as academic creation·religion as text·religion as writing·religions of the book·religious writings·scriptures·shamanisms·shamanist·shamans·Sumeria·Sumerians·texts·The Word·theologians·theology·transcendence·transcendent·Vedic·word·writing
