Religion Dispatches
…always now” of digital time. By the morning after the bombing, the #PrayForBoston meme had faded as a top trend, replaced by the leaner #Boston hashtag, which mostly tracks news and opinion, with calls for prayer appearing more sporadically. As the sun set on the same day, and the #OneBoston hashtag appeared, we were all apparently meant to be over whatever had prompted so many to call for prayer, focusing our energies on the practical what’s next…
Read More
…te segregation and economic favoritism. When I spoke with Rothstein on the phone, he underscored the long-term effects of this last policy. During the 1940s and 1950s, suburban subdivisions were built in St. Louis, and throughout the country, using federal loans stipulating that no homes be sold to African Americans. Priced at about $125,000 in today’s dollars, these were affordable—with a mortgage—to working class families, black or white. Yet bl…
Read More…ether a dispute between former trustees of the Islamic Education Center of Tampa, Florida, and the mosque itself was properly referred to arbitration by an Islamic scholar. Fox News and conservative bloggers are freaking out about the long, slow, imaginary march to shari’ah law taking over the Constitution. But they’ve never objected to very similar arrangements made by Christians. First, the Florida mosque case: according to an article in the St….
Read More
…tion of religion and violence. In “Eight Things We Know for Sure About the Boston Bombings” Strenski argues, among other things, that media coverage will reliably reflect either the parochial view that, given the merest whiff of its presence, the religion of the Other is responsible—or the pollyannaish perspective that religion couldn’t possibly have contributed to violence since it’s essentially a force for good. In “Don’t Blame Religion for Bos…
Read More
…at he was ambivalent about being pro-choice. So I went home and called the Boston Phoenix, and I told the abortion story, and they published it. Then, the Boston Globe said they thought it was an important story. We had previously published the story in the Mormon feminist publication Exponent II. I went on record for the Globe as the source of that story. I was fairly intentional because I felt people should know that when he says, “I’m pro-choic…
Read More
…January, more than 1,200 people were summoned to the federal courthouse in Boston. These potential jurors in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s forthcoming trial were questioned in groups of 200 as the presiding judge winnowed the multitude down, and he has continued to do so in a second phase of questioning that began today. Although this process, called voir dire, is taking place in Massachusetts, which does not have the death penalty for state crimes, this is…
Read More…and refuge, as well as calling for as many people as possible to join the Boston Marathon next year, to show that Boston will not be cowed. There is no pattern that indicates when someone is going to do something as abhorrent as these brothers did. Ultimately, whenever we see acts of individuals like this, it’s because they see no other recourse for themselves; it could be Boston, Columbine, or Newtown. There are no excuses, but neither is there…
Read More
…me shows), even when something unintentional happens—say you know that the airline didn’t intentionally keep you from flying—the question that humans often pose is, “Was this preventable?” “Could they have done something to prevent that?” And that’s when we wonder—well, who could have done something to prevent it? The person at the counter? The pilot? The CEO? We don’t know, and so we have, in a sense, a certain disorientation and don’t know to wh…
Read More
…oommate over a period of months in 1970. Although I can’t find an official number, a casino employee tells us over 5,000 tickets have been sold; 5,000 pilgrims who’ve made the trek from around the country to pay their respects to Annabelle, and are willing to wait hours to do so. On the convention floor, an eclectic group of vendors hocks their wares, from Ouija boards and books about ghost hunting to bath bombs shaped like horror movie icons. The…
Read More…tened to boycott IKEA, after it provided Family Card holders with discount tickets to his Christian magic show, ‘Vision’. In a statement, the chain said it would not be cutting ties with the pastor. IKEA said: “Dear IKEA fans, thanks for your patience while we took time to come to an informed decision on an issue that has raised sensitivities in our community. “After listening to the questions raised, we decided to do a thorough review. We spoke d…
Read More