Late last month, Richard Prince's retrospective “Spiritual America” opened at the Guggenheim in New York City. The glittering array of sculpture, painting and photography, chronicling three decades of work, catches the shiny surfaces of America at its most banal: Playboy cartoons and Borscht belt gags, Sponge Bob Squarepants and naughty nurses, cowboys and cars line the museum's walls. (Here's an unauthorized look at the show.)

Reviews have been mixed; depending on how one feels about appropriation (Prince's stock in trade), irony (his longtime muse) and bricolage (his much-used method). But few have tackled what the show's conceit means to Prince or his audience—that is, what, why and how might art have something to say about the nation's soul.

Some reviewers made a slight nod in that direction.  Writing in the New York Sun, Daniel Kunitz wonders if Prince's “polished mirror reflect(s) something empty in the spirit of America.” Likewise, John Haber, noting the irony of the title, finds it, nevertheless, “thoroughly dispiriting.”

But there's little explanation beyond these embedded complaints, and the paper of record makes no mention at all of the rationale for the retrospective's title.  

Thankfully, The New Yorker's Peter Schjeldahl lets it all hang out, noting the reference is to Prince's “1983 photograph of an infamous Garry Gross photograph, published by Playboy Books, in 1976, of a naked Brooke Shields, aged ten, her prepubescent body oiled and her face given womanly makeup. Prince applied the title—which comes from Alfred Stieglitz, who coined it for his 1923 photograph of a gelded workhorse's rear end—to the work, to a show consisting of nothing else, and to the one off gallery in a Lower East Side storefront, that first hosted it.”  

Interestingly, the photograph is not given pride of place. In fact, it's a little hard to find, hung off the beaten track opposite a woman's bathroom. In the curator's notes, Nancy Spector refers to it “as a portrait of desperation,” which—pimping a child's body as an intersection between innocence and experience—it certainly is. Still, as I looked (or looked away) from the image, I wanted to know more about why Prince had chosen spiritual America as an organizing theme.

It's easy to read into the exhibition. Photographs of Marlboro men, biker chicks, perfectly arranged rooms and sensuously displayed products reflect our soul's mediated desires. But the critique is a little too easy—Manhattan elite yet again skewers the masses—for comfort.

Perhaps reviewers take Prince's critique for granted: his work reveals the pretense, soullessness and dirty little secrets that make sport of our notions of a Christian nation. But I'd like to think there's more there. I'd like to hear from commentators who, understanding both art and religion in America, could say something, well, revelatory about this sobering rendition of our current spiritual state.

Who knew that fundamentalists were wired differently?  That's the argument made by Kenneth M. Heilman, a professor of neurology at the University of Florida, and  Russell S. Donda, in the current issue of Tikkun. Heilman and Donda argue that the type of brain activity that promotes creative, open-ended thinking may not be common, possible or promoted among religious conservatives.

But the bigger problem is that Heilman and Donda's argument is based on one conjecture after another. Their contentions may eventually be born out by research, but in the meantime they make a lot of assumptions – not least of all that fundamentalism reflects a less evolved brain.

“Do extremism and an unconditional adherence to religious dogma result from a failure of portion of the frontal lobe to fully develop, or if fully developed, to activate?” they ask, adding that some tests would suggest so. “This unqualified disdain for divergent beliefs, for personal interpretation and for creative theories like Darwin's theory of evolution, may indeed have at least a partial biological explanation: a reduced utilization of that section of the brain which has played such a vital role in humanity's creative advances—the frontal lobes.”

The reduced utilization of the frontal lobes, say the authors, gets folks “stuck in a doctrinal belief system” which is intolerant of alternative interpretations. Thus, cut off from the wellspring of creativity, fundamentalists cleave ever tighter to their rigid ideas.

As noted previously, much of this is speculative. But Heilman's and Donda's self-congratulatory tone turns a former metaphor into hard science: religious conservatives really are close-minded.

It's this kind of writing that perpetuates the notion that there is no neutral ground between religion and science. Even if further tests prove the authors right, there must be other ways to describe the mechanics of thought other than good (creative and questioning) and bad (rigid and absolutist). Heilman and Donda correctly note that IQ measurements, once thought to be determinative of intelligence, are now understood to measure one type of ability. We now know there are multiple types of intelligence, and the challenge is to nurture each of them.

Maybe Tikkun and like-minded readers don't want to see a third way to report on neurological breakthroughs. But it's time to try.

Intrigued by the Templeton ad in the New York Times “Week in Review,” I decided to investigate which, whether and when news publications write intelligently, interestingly and insightfully about religion and science.

It's a few days old, but the best piece  (okay the only piece) I found was in TimesOnline. Written by Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, it argues, “religion and science are like the two hemispheres of the brain, one analytical, the other integrative.”

An elegant writer and thoughtful commentator, Sacks notes: “The current argument between 'religion' and 'science' is deeply unnecessary. It involves a caricature of religion and a parody of science. It is structured around a set of absurd oppositions between science and superstition, reason and revelation, knowledge and wishful thinking as if scientists and religious believers were incapable of realising the limits of their respective domains. We need both: science to tell us how the world is, religion (and philosophy) to tell us how it ought to be.”

This may sound unrealistic to American readers who have witnessed the struggle between die-hard believers in both camps. Their take no prisoners attitude belies the notion of separate domains.

Yet, many other Americans may share Sacks' perspective. If so, another type of science and religion narrative might be in order.

If you've read an intelligent, interesting and insightful story on religion and science this month, please email it to us and we'll post it.

On a wholly other front—138 Muslims leaders today sent an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI and other Christian eminences worldwide. The letter calls on Christians and Muslims to find areas of commonality and work for peace. I'll be interested to see if the story is more than a one-day wonder.

Usually a newspaper is just a newspaper. But other times, it points to something beyond its ephemeral self. Sunday's New York Times “Week in Review” is a case in point, encapsulating the problem of and solution to two of journalism's current quandaries.  How to make readers care and how best to use new technology are the two biggies heading up most media managers'  “To Do” lists.  The “Week in Review” offered examples of both in-depth content and creative web work—ironically, it was a paid ad that did the heavy lifting.

The Sunday section was bookended by two pieces on religion and politics. On the front page, reporter Laurie Goodstein recounted the concern that some evangelicals feel about being taken for granted by the GOP. On the back opinion page, Jon Meacham used a John McCain interview to offer a civics lesson on the Founding Fathers' intentions. (Message to McCain: They were not establishing a Christian nation.) Goodstein's news analysis and Meacham's opinion piece were both accurate and intelligent as far as they went, but they don't take us very far. We've read variations on these for the past five, ten, fifteen years. At bottom, they're reworkings of the culture war narrative that dominates so much of our political and our religion-and-politics coverage. We all know what the problem is, who'll be quoted and how the ending will turn out.

But smack in the middle of the section, a two page ad, paid for by the John Templeton Foundation,  presented a rarely raised (at least in the newspapers) problem, a host of unfamiliar voices and an indeterminate conclusion. (Full disclosure: I have never received support from the foundation. In fact, I'm turned down every time I ask.) By directing readers who wanted more information to its website, the Foundation demonstrated how new media could pierce through previously finite barriers of space and time to offer deep discussion on a range of ideas.

The spread reported answers (yes, no, unlikely, not sure, perhaps and I hope so) to a “big question:”  weighing in on “Does the universe have a purpose?” a dozen scientists, theologians and Big Thinkers offered 250 or so words with the promise of more online.

Templeton has long averred that there are more than two sides to the conversation on religion and science. But despite funding academic research and journalism seminars, they've had limited success bringing that message to the public. In fact for much of the past decade, most journalists who wrote about the foundation's activities seemed to think it was a front for the religious right.

Now the foundation is trying a different tack, taking its new mission directly to the people. New media makes this possible, and my guess is that a lot of folks would like to read what astrophysicists, computer scientists, biochemists and philosophers have to say about purpose in the universe. Templeton reminds us that debates don't have to be reductionist. In fact, news coverage  notwithstanding, most of us can handle (and in today's world need) a range of perspectives.

Timesonline has a absorbing interview with a Buddhist monk recently escaped from Myanmar. Speaking through a translator, Vida (who did not want to give his first name) explained how this summer's hikes in fuel costs took him from the monastic life to street protests. “We saw the people getting poorer and poorer and their troubles get bigger and bigger. We thought the monks could negotiate between the regime and the people and show loving kindness to both sides.”

Now in Thailand, Vida plans on returning to Burma to topple the military junta. “They will not last much longer. The monks have the power of love but we need the international community too.”