Religion Dispatches
…would take away from the little sense of protection this gives me!) Anyway, the point is, I have to settle my affairs before departure. A person cannot use their mortgage money to pay for hajj, but your mortgage does NOT have to be paid off in order to go. People get confused by this, because one of the pre-conditions is that one must be debt-free. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an amount due against my credit card (or my mortgage, if I still had…
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…a wedge issue. But even before John Paul, the U.S. bishops’ conference had, in 1976, meddled in electoral politics when they pronounced themselves “encouraged” by Gerald Ford’s abortion views while they were “disappointed” by Carter’s. The U.S. bishops’ conference nevertheless retained a significant center-left faction throughout the 1980s. These bishops continued to emphasize social justice concerns like the abuses of capitalism and militarism i…
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…very step the earth has become tinier, its inhabitants more inconsequential, and, paradoxically, more ignorant. And with every outward step, as our universe and our ignorance grows, so do the number of potential space alien hideouts. So does the belief that there must be someone out there. So every time I read about the discovery of a new Earth-like planet or read about NASA’s upcoming Kepler planet-finding mission or watch a movie like Contact, I…
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…ous mischaracterizations, including a confusion of witchcraft with Satanism, accusations of ritual sacrifice, evangelical exaggeration of the size and growth of witchcraft, and a misreading of fantasy, fairy tale, and horror depictions of witches as reflecting real-world practice. Although these disturbing tendencies won’t be disappearing soon, there are some promising changes on the horizon. A small group of evangelical academics, including the n…
Read More…the name of Islam, but really it was for their own personal causes. I never, ever, apologize for terrorism. I never commit it and so I do not bear any personal responsibility for it. This is hard for some people to hear. Just like it is hard for many black people to hear white people say they are not responsible for slavery, since they did not have slaves. Therefore they have nothing to apologize for. In both cases what is said is true. However, t…
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…iolence. Beyond the inflicting of individual pain, violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people has effects far beyond the individual target. This is what Iris Marion Young terms “systematic violence” in her famous “Five Faces of Oppression.” It is a violence of instrumentality—violence with the effect of keeping an entire group subjugated and in a state of oppression. Young argues, “Members of some groups live with the knowledg…
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…n II’s sessions overflowed to Roman restaurants. Despite the spread of sole, bass, and shrimp on display in one Life photograph, the caption noted that the picture was taken on a Wednesday, so the bishops chose steak. Ultimately, Life would offer far fewer Catholic cover images than Time, but those it did feature suggested that Catholic lives were also family lives, sacramental lives, and American lives—regardless of one’s position within the Chur…
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…in response to a prophecy that one of those countries will be converted is, at best, problematic. On an entirely pragmatic level, these kinds of actions feed the fears of the most reactionary elements in the Orthodox world, for whom the fear of Western encroachment is very real. As these are the forces that we’re all collectively interested in keeping at bay, adding fuel to their fire seems ill-advised. Also, not to steal Chrissy Stroop’s gig, bu…
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…hifting worldwide alignment to the southern hemisphere; particularly Africa, Asia, and Latin America. How this realignment—‘de-Europeanization’ might be overstating it, but not by much—of Christian communities in America affects politics, ecumenical relations, and inter-religious dialogue remains to be seen, but American Christianity today belies any notion of common ground or uniformity. Maybe it really is inaccurate to speak about “the Christian…
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…he speakers, Professor Patrick Lee of Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, insisted that we “owe to God thanks and reverence for his many blessings” and said “this is true not only of us as individuals but us as a community, us as a country.” This was just after Beck and Barton were hyping the important of individual salvation and individual Liberty. Because God has shed his grace on America, Lee said, “we have a solemn duty as a community…
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