Religion Dispatches
…museum escape the fiction of its own secularity and thereby rediscover its spiritual roots, its spiritual task? It is telling that Sweeney’s bold vision was not entirely successful. He resigned from the Guggenheim when Harry Frank Guggenheim encouraged him to promote “a more popular educational approach.” And he was later asked to step down from his post at the Houston Museum when his “innovative if controversial curatorial approach came up agains…
Read More…s right now. For one thing, I really did take this as a good thing, in the spirit of the early warning system. Since the time my friend said, you have to be invited by Allah to make the hajj; I have been in various states of preparation. I’ve been preparing to receive the invitation, preparing to recognize it when it is given, and preparing to accept it. I considered it a mandate to do whatever was necessary to put me in the right place for it all…
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…et a killer who did keep up the performance, but with things like September 11th and al-Qaeda, or, persons like Osamah bin-Laden, at least I know they exist. So, it’s not magic. The prophet said, “If a man washed in a river five times a day, would there be any dirt left on him?”, and the companions said, “No our Prophet, there would be no dirt left on him.” “That,” he said, “is what happens to the soul, when one prays five times a day, no dirt is…
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…riage provides these statistics for the year 2000: *Utah’s marriage rate is 10.6 per 1,000 populations, well above that of the United States, which stands at 8.7 *Median age at first marriage in Utah—Groom: 23 Bride: 21 *Median age at first marriage in United States—Groom: 26.8 Bride: 25.1 Marriages contracted so early face significant challenges, so it is good that the Mormon church does not forbid divorce, although the fact that Mormon couples o…
Read More…d “one-accord power” is when believers are in covenant with God, united in spirit and soul, with the power to reproduce (here Gothard appears to be referring to discipling, not sex). The believers must have no “competing affections” with their love for God, because “if we have any competing affections, God describes us as adulterers and adulteresses.” That power is broken by, well, the devil, who else? “One-accord power is extremely difficult to a…
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…ion per minute), the rescue of the Chilean miners is the largest expressly spiritual, global, digital event. In a world of spiritual ambiguity and religious indifference, the Copiapó miners’ ascents from the depths of the earth were nothing if not a participatory allegory of the human spirit challenged by the machinery of greed and raised up on the strength of a complex technology whose success seems to have been made possible only by the perfect…
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…h is being manifested, they are going to miss the boat. I believe the Holy Spirit is speaking among the lay people of the church and the Bishops who are not discerning that call, and are not listening to that voice, to their detriment. I think the illogical statements that bishops make about LGBT people and issues cause Catholic people to question bishops’ moral authority, not only on that issue but on other issues as well. We saw with birth contr…
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…st gospel singer in the world.” For all that, she didn’t win a Grammy until 1995 for her album “Songs of the Church.” Walker’s voice and presence filled many a church, but it was her generous spirit that supported the careers of many singers that made her an exceptional woman and gospel singer. Burke’s influence on country western music, as well as the Rolling Stones, Al Green and others, was a seamless marriage of the sacred and secular. Burke, o…
Read More…e of November (or according to the Islamic lunar calendar, the 8th ’til the 13th of Zul-Hijjah), so I have some flexibility. Keep in mind, for example, that people already in Saudi Arabia, and even some minimalists from outside, will only come for the hajj proper. Although it tends to be crowded there starting with Ramadan, there is some semblance of ‘before and after.’ To maximize my before, I think having some time to be there, but not in the ih…
Read More…ure, imagine that! We also have the notion of resurrection but not just in spirit, but in body too. In fact, the Qur’an says, even if you take the dead and throw pieces hither and yon, the pieces will all come back together to face the Judgment. But again, every one will be brought to final Judgment, no gender distinction. Now, you’d think it would be like passing an algebra test, but it’s not. Because there are things that weigh in here, unlike y…
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