In the 18th century,
antireligious ideas and sentiments started to creep in and by the early 20th century the government had de-Christianized the country, exiling and/or imprisoning priests and bishops, closing seminaries, confiscating church properties.
The long, deep friendship of Clemens and Twichell--a Congregationalist minister of Hartford, Connecticut--rarely fails to surprise, given the general reputation Twain has of being
antireligious. Beyond this, an examination of the growth, development, and shared interests characterizing that friendship makes it evident that as in most things about him, Mark Twain defies such easy categorization or judgment.
The book is neither
antireligious nor antigovernment; it simply presents the effects of the interactions between the two entities.
The broadcast showed a whole rack of such "obscene" and "
antireligious" material bearing the word "LOVE" in giant letters.
Thus the neuroscientist Sam Harris, whose 2004 book The End of Faith launched his career as an
antireligious polemicist, sees a direct and inextricable link between the holy book of Islam and the violence that has been such a prominent feature of the early years of the 21st century: "If you believe anything like what the Koran says you must believe in order to escape the fires of hell, you will, at the very least, be sympathetic with the actions of Osama bin Laden." (1)
Anti-Muslim and
antireligious sentiment as well as securitydriven treatment of Muslim citizens by governments would be counterproductive.
Floods are not all the work of God HAVING never ever allowed anyone to foist their religion, or
antireligious views on me, I do show some empathy towards Eddie Sanders (Talkback, December 31).
What allows for the continued connection--for the play to swing, as it were, between
antireligious revenge polemic and religious allegory--is the very human body of the actor.
"It is, at once, an
antireligious tale of apocalypse, and, chillingly, a fabulist version of our own times....
What Wilson and others have done is to dignify conventional
antireligious sentiment by wrapping it in the language of science.
He traces the heightening
antireligious sentiment during the French Revolution, interestingly noting how clerical figures, such as Abbe Sieyes, contributed to it.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin recently denounced all
antireligious assaults committed over the past months against holy sites during a visit to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem to express his Easter greetings to heads of the churches of Jerusalem.