Religion Dispatches
…ent to the art. The search took them to Rome, Ravenna, and Turkey; then to Germany. “It took Jesus a long time to die,” Brock says. Not until 965 in northern Germany was the life-sized oak crucifix called the Gero Cross carved. On it, the Christian God was suffering and dying: an image of terror, torture, and desolation. The carving is now in the Cathedral of St. Peter and Maria in Cologne. Could there be a connection that one hundred years later,…
Read More…rder. According to Bray, Americans live in a situation “comparable to Nazi Germany,” a state of hidden warfare, as the comforts of modern society have lulled the populace into apathy. Bray was convinced that a dramatic event, such as economic collapse or social chaos would reveal the demonic role of the government, and people would have “the strength and the zeal to take up arms” in a revolutionary struggle. What he envisioned as the outcome of th…
Read More…boys and paired them with adult homosexual soldiers. Brownshirt leaders in Germany recruited boys from the local high schools for sex. Roehm himself once briefly fled Germany for South America over a scandal involving a young male prostitute. This bodes ill for the young men who will be our future draftees. The scenario I see unfolding if we allow homosexuals to serve openly in the military is an initial period of turmoil in which members of the s…
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…rching Quiverfull, I read many fundamentalists who took that charge seriously enough to counter it, and tell women that there was no such thing as freedom, but only slavery to sin or to God. Koonz’s book is a meticulous history of women during wartime Germany—the resurgence of patriarchal gender roles, their movements for and against these roles, the politicking of Germany’s versions of Phyllis Schlafly, angling for power with male leaders as they…
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…ant distinction between America and Europe on this question. Many youth in Germany and Poland have taken a strong interest in Jewish culture, music, and religion in the past decade or so. Whether this is a product of guilt or, as she prefers, collective shame, what is interesting is that Europe’s renewed interest in (its) Jews and Judaism more generally does not translate into a reflexive support of Israel. This, I think, is a healthier attitude t…
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…ogy of Opus Dei. It is no surprise that Pope Benedict comes from a country—Germany—where the percentage of Church members attending Sunday mass is one of the lowest in the world. Strict adherence to orthodoxy will not be popular. In an odd parallel, Benedict’s view of the Church resembles the ecclesiology of the Protestant theologian Stanley Hauerwas, who argued that the Christian church should focus on creating a community of character that stric…
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…movement was presenting a Judaism that could cohere with emancipation and promote the inclusion of Jews teaching Judaism in the academy. Its audience was as much the German academy as it was Jews. Whatever the case in 19th-century Germany, Greenberg argues that in late 20th-century America, “the problems of Jewish identity and Jewish survival are bound to emerge and haunt Judaic scholars with great intensity. This is because the crisis of moderni…
Read More…ties. Anti-choice organisations have embraced this rhetoric, and use it to promote their policy agenda by presenting themselves as grassroots opposition initiatives representing citizens and their concerns vis-à-vis the political elites attempting to force a ‘new form of colonial rule’ upon them. One of the anti-SRHR groups, Agenda Europe, responding with a mocking post entitled, “Baby-killing and Sodomy Network worried about Pro-Life and Pro-Fami…
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…ng to burn and send you to hell, where you all belong.” Ireland: New group promotes LGBT inclusion in Presbyterian Church The Belfast Telegraph reports on a retired lawyer’s efforts to create a group that would promote inclusion of LGBT people in the Presbyterian Church, an effort “to emulate the success of existing grups such as Changing Ireland and Accepting Sexuality, which have been operating within the Church of Ireland and the Irish Methodis…
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…der of Marwa Sherbini in a Dresden courtroom and the proceeding silence in Germany point to a disturbing trend in Europe. It is okay to hate Muslims. Alex W. was not a “lone wolf” and many xenophobic groups are no longer quite fringe. These developments are disturbing to all Europeans, not just to Muslims. Because the doors of hatred do not operate singly. One door of hatred opens multiple doors. Non-Muslim immigrants and minorities should not rea…
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