Religion Dispatches
…nalist I’d never heard of) the story’s hero. This is how I experienced the book The Help. The second false message is this: The really important point of all cultural production and activity is for white agency and dignity to be actualized. The overarching plot of this book presents the narrative of a young white woman finding herself and her voice amidst cliches, circumscriptions, traditions of the South during the 1960s. Against this background,…
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…I know the the popularity of punk, amongst other genres, outside the Anglophone world. I think Mike’s book clearly speaks to a lot of people, but as fiction there is a comfortable level of distance. You are actually making the music, and that’s really the tension I want to explore. It’s one thing to utilize the genre, it’s another to inject it with themes related to Islam. I will be honest and say that I am surprised at how well your lyrical cont…
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…so many people across the world, including many who I hope will read this book, are choosing yoga as a part of their everyday regimens, but I also hoped to engage those who reject it outright, sometimes with great hostility. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Entertain them? Piss them off? I hoped to inform all of Selling Yoga’s readers and to offend some of them. In fact, if this book does not offend at least some readers, it is not properly…
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…tell humorous stories, and he regarded this as one of his most interesting books. He told me he was disappointed that the book did not have more of an impact in the United States. He felt that it had a better reception in Europe. In his last years he became increasingly interested in religion in a global context. His Center for Culture, Religion and World Affairs at Boston University became an important arena for scholars from different religious…
Read More…ith policymakers, government officials, academics and service members, the book shows the cruel and unaffordable costs of the current gay ban,” according to the book’s Web site. See here for Frank’s friendly visit last week with John Stewart on The Daily Show. ++++++++++ RD Tidbits Coral Ridge Ministries’ New Pastor: In mid-March, the members of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (founded by the late D. James Kennedy) elected the Rev. Tullian Tchivid…
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…ls. Those words matter—they have power. Adkisson was a true believer. Your book is rife with paragraphs bashing “the Left”—an enigmatic group of “liberals” painted so broadly that your label for them must be capitalized. These are the people to blame if anything goes wrong in the world. Terrorism? “The Left” didn’t hunt down the terrorists before they struck. War? “The Left” didn’t do enough to protect us from our enemies and have opposed our mili…
Read More…air. Why is there this double standard? That’s the reason why I wrote this book.” Hannity has repeatedly attacked both Sotomayor and Michelle Obama in show after show, and remains on the air. Talker Mark Levin called Sotomayor “Ruth Bader Ginsburg plus about 50 pounds.” He’s still on the air. There is no reverse discrimination against Prejean, and right wing talkers continue to slam their opponents without mercy and get to keep their jobs. What re…
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…to counter the religious right. What alternative title would you give the book? “A Primer in Progressive Theology.” How do you feel about the cover? It’s very inviting and says something important about the book. It shows an open door, full of clear glass, that suggests you are about to leave the house and step into the world. That’s where we want readers to go. Is there a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? Daniel C. Maguire…
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…Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh, he had a copy of Kahlil Gibran’s later book Sand and Foam, which is where he borrowed the “Julia” lyrics, “half of what I say is meaningless…” and “when I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind.” Nobody gets to Sand And Foam without first knowing The Prophet. Its fame with famous people didn’t end in the 60s, and it wasn’t just for the counterculture. Maureen Reagan, the President’s rebel daughter, had i…
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…s who do not know a single Jew. Furthermore, there is hardly a significant number of religious or even semi-secular Jews in the public eye in films, books, and television shows. We are being edited out, one conversion narrative, one Holocaust denial, one romantic Nazi, one anti-Semitic slur at a time. What it means to live as a Jew in modern America is to have complex feelings about history, about G-d, about Israel, and about one’s own practice. I…
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