Religion Dispatches
…ng line of theological interventions in the most pressing moral problems of each successive generation. While Cox’s aim is certainly true, The Market as God misses the target….
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…d against the Pequots—one of the genocides of indigenous peoples that Santorum brushes aside. The Puritans waged a holy war on the Pequots, setting fire to a village on the Mystic River, killing 700 indigenous men, women, and children, and selling the survivors into slavery. As I’ve written elsewhere, the genocide was like something out of the Book of Joshua. The Puritans certainly saw it that way. John Mason, the Puritan militia commander and an…
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…slation,” Ferrell walks us through the complex and bedeviled history of a truly Modern English-language Bible. We all know how Martin Luther’s revolutionary reform of the Catholic church was embedded in two fundamental practices: translation of the Bible into the German vernacular, and thus putting the Book back into the People’s hands. That dangerous and unsettling principle, “the priesthood of all believers,” requires first and foremost a Bible…
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…sites actually shape people’s responses to deep theological questions? Can search results and search engine optimization influence the beliefs of an individual confronting a difficult question? It’s hard to tell. But as people go online for answers to religious questions, fundamentalist and fringe religious groups do have chances to dominate the search results and stake out authoritative-sounding positions, regardless of their influence offline. Y…
Read MoreOctavia Nasr, CNN’s senior Middle East editor, is no longer with CNN. Her departure from CNN shows a continued lack of consistency when it comes to issues of Arabs and Muslims in the mainstream media. She left for a tweet that said nothing except that she was human. Nasr is of Lebanese descent and proud of her birth land. Because of her professional and personal knowledge of the country, she expressed a sentiment over the death of Marja’ at-Taqli…
Read More…rom the market, there is no freedom to be anything but at the mercy of the market. It’s almost impossible to be entirely free of the market these days, but it is possible, and politically feasible, to decouple social and market status. 2) The reason our political leaders can’t or won’t make the effort to think outside the market idolatry isn’t that they’re stupid or politically blind or sinful or corrupt or what-have-you, though they display all t…
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…litics, compared to only 14% of Americans. Notably, only 2% say they most trust CNN. Most do not blame Trump for the violence on January 6th, and one-third believe our current political and cultural context may justify political violence: Only 15% believe Donald Trump bears a lot of responsibility for the violent actions of the rioters who took over the U.S. Capitol building on January 6th, compared to a majority (56%) of Americans (PRRI survey, 2…
Read More…ch the term “gay marriage” on Google and you’ll get 12 million results—all running the spectrum of being for, against, or neutral on the subject. Type that term into a search engine called SeekFind, and all you’ll find are articles arguing against marriage equality for gays and lesbians. Why? Because SeekFind is part of a new trend among search engines reported on recently by NPR—offering built-in bias. Shea Houdmann runs SeekFind, a Colorado Spri…
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…later. We’re watching her in a 1973 report on the Bowie phenomenon by the BBC news program Nationwide, uploaded to YouTube. “They said ‘e was comin’ ‘round the back! I’ve been waiting for ages to see ‘im,” she wails, agonized at missing the star’s limousine arrive. “Why’re you so upset?” a bemused interviewer asks, across a generational chasm. She looks up, incredulous at the man’s inability to grasp the obvious: “He’s smashing!” Another girl cro…
Read More…lesbian kiss scene in the first episode of the new season of Dr. Who. The BBC Worldwide’s London-based compliance team made the cut to conform with laws against same-sex relations and broadcast content in Asian countries such as Muslim majority Malaysia and Indonesia. Viewers in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore also watched the same censored version…. Jeanne Leong, director of communications at BBC Worldwide Asia, said as an internatio…
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