{"id":672,"date":"2013-12-15T10:47:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-15T18:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2013\/12\/richard-rodriguez-on-religion-atheism-and-politics.html"},"modified":"2014-01-07T16:08:21","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T00:08:21","slug":"richard-rodriguez-on-religion-atheism-and-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2013\/12\/richard-rodriguez-on-religion-atheism-and-politics.html","title":{"rendered":"Richard Rodriguez on Religion, Atheism and Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SOMETIMES I wonder why the words &#8212; especially the personal essays &#8212; of Richard Rodriguez hit me so directly. He is a gay Latino born in the &#8217;40s, a devout if conflicted Catholic, and on many issues a political or social conservative. My origins and allegiances are very different and coincide with none of those categories (I have long thought of myself, for instance, as a Protestant agnostic on religious matters.)<\/p>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-lb2zvdteQsg\/Uq35NWdg7PI\/AAAAAAAACjM\/dclQHHiMQhA\/s1600\/DARLING_011384040583.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"border: 0px;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-lb2zvdteQsg\/Uq35NWdg7PI\/AAAAAAAACjM\/dclQHHiMQhA\/s320\/DARLING_011384040583.jpg\" width=\"213\" height=\"320\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>Part of my connection to Rodriguez&#8217;s work, I think, is that he writes so well about California, a major concern for The Misread City. But mainly, our mismatched alliance comes simply from the power of great writing, and deep thinking. I&#8217;m always curious what he has to say, even when we (frequently) disagree.<\/p>\n<p>His elegant new book <i>Darling<\/i> is on religion after 9\/11, and it&#8217;s his first in a decade. It&#8217;s my favorite work of his going back even longer.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2013\/12\/15\/richard_rodriguez_new_atheism_has_a_distinctly_neo_colonial_aspect\/\">Here<\/a> is my Salon interview with Richard Rodriguez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SOMETIMES I wonder why the words &#8212; especially the personal essays &#8212; of Richard Rodriguez hit me so directly. He is a gay Latino born in the &#8217;40s, a devout if conflicted Catholic, and on many issues a political or social conservative. My origins and allegiances are very different and coincide with none of those [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,37,34,36,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-672","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"category-catholic","9":"category-literary","10":"category-religion","11":"category-west-coast","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}