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I think we should be cautious about attempts to frame the Boston bombings, or for that matter any profound act of violence, mainly as a failure of (or an injunction for) “interfaith cooperation.”

It is patronizing to reduce religion to “ethics” or “values.”

RD bloggers have rightly asked the question of the depth of the “piety” of the Tsarnaevs. That too misses a vital point. I do not for a moment discount the sincerity of the feelings for Islam by the Tsarnaev brothers. But, what Islam was the object of those feelings? I would offer that it was for an “Internet Islam”—for an abstract, compact, easily rendered Islam, fed by the representations flowing from out of the ether!

(Not recommended.)

In RD this week, Ivan Strenski and Mark Juergensmeyer offer their trademark nuanced approaches to the question of religion and violence.

My grandfather, born to immigrants in 1878, was undoubtedly familiar with the all-but-forgotten figure of Robert Green Ingersoll, the “Great Agnostic,” who popularized Darwin for the millions, who championed the disgraced Thomas Paine, and who kept alive the important tradition of American free thought during the last quarter of the 19th century.

“That’s the good news of Christianity for me. It’s not that you can be happy and whole, but rather that life is crap and you don’t know the answers. It’s good news to be freed from the oppression that there’s something that’s going to make it all better.”

A bloggingheads discussion.

Why are people attracted to living charismatic leaders?

As soon as it became clear that the older of the two suspects in the Boston bombing had become a more fervent Muslim in recent years, commentators began to point to religion as the culprit. But is it?