Tom F. Driver taught for many years at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He is the author of Liberting Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual.
Paul F. Knitter, the distinguished and blessedly maverick Catholic theologian, has had many lives. And more than one religion. His devotional life is now a double one—or, as he calls it, a hybrid.
The news from Colombia is mostly bad. The number of people forced to flee from their homes and find makeshift shelter has increased from about 2 million in 2001 to nearly 3 million today. They flee both from the armed conflict and from having their farms sprayed with poison from airplanes—a futile attempt to eradicate the production of coca, from which cocaine is derived.
In the name of the “war on drugs” much of Colombia is being subjected to terror in the form of massacres, assassinations, rapes and the spraying of poison from airplanes.
They are as American as the Fourth of July, these sensationalist preachers who nowadays crowd the TV screen and in earlier days brought thousands into camp meetings.
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