Religion Dispatches
…president, I don’t think he’d, like, allow the United States to go out of business and succumb to the mass anarchy of roving mobs by accident.” To which the person replied, “No, if Newt were president and that happened, it would be on purpose.” The guy’s not stupid, in other words. He’s smart enough that when he recently spoke in favor of a national personhood amendment at the Thanksgiving Family Forum, and then got flack for it, he clarified tha…
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…f the protest, while fervently praying that it would not disrupt cathedral business for much longer. The tense situation exploded last Thursday when the cathedral decided to initiate legal proceedings to evict the protesters. Fraser resigned from his post in protest at the risk of “violence in the name of the Church”—and so became the hero of the movement, a sort of Friar Tuck. It is also thought that he had written a report on the ethics of the f…
Read More…g the very heart of America—not because of the buildings’ association with business or commerce, but because their location in lower Manhattan has long symbolized America’s noblest ideals. Our response in the decade since 9/11 has been spotty at times but generally consistent with those ideals. On the negative side of the ledger, Muslims have sometimes been targeted, and a cynical president used the attacks as a pretext to rush the United States i…
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…ooper was subjected to years of harassment, including frequent lawsuits (a classic Scientology tactic), a smear campaign, and an outrageous attempt to frame her for bomb threats. More recently, according to The Village Voice, Scientology has been digging for dirt on Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, for satirizing the church in the 2005 episode “Trapped in the Closet.” The church allegedly hired investigators to go through…
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…ens Allowed” sign. But what will those who pass the pearly gates eat, and will they say a blessing? Oh, and Bad Boyz Cutz? Back open for business as of last Monday, all charges dropped….
Read More…izens; that birthright citizenship is unconstitutional; that regulation of business is contrary to constitutional principles and “liberty;” and in some extreme cases, that secession may be necessary. Conservatives are big on touting themselves as “constitutional conservatives,” signaling their hostility, in short, to 20th century legislative reforms and jurisprudence and, in some cases, the very purposes of the post-Civil War amendments to the Con…
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…ancial calamity. The coalition partners each had their particular motives. Businessmen fretted the bottom line, while religious leaders feared godless Communism. But many saw the overarching threat as one and the same: the New Deal would undo the American way of life predicated on radical individualism, hallowed by Christian teaching, and protected by the political system that had developed in tandem with free-market capitalism. Funded by the head…
Read More…de the faith. And given that Mormons tend to marry, socialize with, and do business (whenever possible) with other Mormons, I’ve wondered if our community’s social insularity has also played some role in candidate Romney’s unease. Perhaps his lack of ease stems in part from the conservative life choices Mitt made, many according to the directives of his Mormon faith. After all, when Mitt Romney was 19 and 20 years old, he was knocking doors as a p…
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…in the public spectacle of his yoga trances. He later became a fashionable businessman and community leader, but always remained a teacher of yoga. At every stage of Bernard’s yoga career, mainstream Americans remained suspicious of his teachings. He received media attention from all over the country but only attracted a small following made up of those who could afford, both financially and socially, to be eccentric. There were numerous attempts…
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…led to the erosion of the religion itself. Beauty of a sort really is the business of the church. I’ll return to that point. But a closer reading of this book, and of the subtitle, suggests that this cannot be Bragg’s final view. The radical impacts he traces lay more in the realm of ethics, science, and politics. The story he wishes to tell is unapologetically Protestant and unapologetically English, but the crux of the liberating and radical im…
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