Religion Dispatches
…e are religious extremists in our religion as there are in others and we struggle with prejudices within our community and without. We see bridges between peoples and inclusion leading to integration and mutual cultural enrichment as evidenced by our own mixed backgrounds. We are American Muslims of mixed Irish and Jewish backgrounds, and have great faith in the strength of cultural diversity. But just when we would like to think that racial and r…
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News of Václav Havel’s death arrived just days after the New York Times literally stopped the presses to report on the death of the brilliant, caustic, maddening intellectual iconoclast Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens and Havel shared a fierce and fearless opposition to tyrannies, whether from the right or left. For me, Havel’s passing brings a more reflective sadness, a sense of what he could yet have taught Americans about the moral responsibil…
Read More…just how far they take that view. After all, in the conservative Christian world there is a spectrum of views on how these texts are to be read. Evangelical feminists argue that the Bible actually teaches mutual submission between men and women. But Reconstructionists, some of whom have influenced Bachmann, have suggested that, given the biblical order for families, women probably shouldn’t be voting. I wrote about Reconstructionist biblical patri…
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…drinking coffee and holding watch. We talk to drunks as they pass by; sometimes we find allegiance that may or may not be remembered in the morning, and sometimes we just bore potential attackers into docility by inviting them to explain their politics. Tent-kickers are rarely brave enough to kick a person, and “Get a job!” is easily answered by “I have two, but unemployment in North Carolina is over ten percent.” This is the Occupation of Chapel…
Read More…k, and we need to just take authority over the attacks that would come…sometimes the attack of the enemy is the lethargy among God’s people.” One preacher from Memphis said she was ashamed that Strang and Jackson were in a position of having to beg for money from Christian leaders for his campaign. Jackson also let some frustration show, saying, “What the church is good at right now is by default letting the other guys absolutely eat our lunch… Th…
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…ng progressives, it further solidifies the libertarian-Tea Party-Christian-worldview-ahistorical-revisionist wing of American politics. The Glenn Beck-GOP mutual admiration society nothwithstanding, some of his conservative Christian friends were worried that he may have portrayed them in an uncaring light. And that’s where Beck’s theology becomes problematic; if, as he hinted in his pre-July 4th special history program, “The State of Religion in…
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…the preamble to their constitution included a quote from Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum—a papal encyclical written in response to the ravages of late-19th century industrial capitalism: Rich men and masters should remember this—that to exercise pressure for the sake of gain upon the indigent and the destitute, and to make one’s profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine. To defraud anyone for wages that are his du…
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…e conservative movement; or, as Mitt Romney liked to call them when he was running for president, the three legs of the conservative stool. (Please, no scatological humor.) We’ve got the moral crusaders, who are the ones trying to keep the queers apart. Then we’ve got the kill-’em-allers—the foreign policy neocons who haven’t the slightest interest in Constitutional or statutory limits to executive power. And finally there’s the gimme-gimme-gimme…
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…ma health care plan. More progressive feminist Catholics, myself included, rued the fact that the plan did not cover the full spectrum of reproductive health care—including abortion. Nevertheless, the pragmatic nuns offered bona fide Catholic support for the proposal as written, over and against the US bishops who, to this writing, continue to oppose the legislation because it includes coverage for contraception without enough exemptions to satisfy…
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…r a long time for come, and we need to work out ways of living together in mutual respect. This runs counter to a usual stance of many nonbelievers and believers. My answer: “Believers and Secularists: We Need to Talk.” D) “After rejecting God and religion, one only needs reason and science.” We need much more, especially coherent contemporary secular philosophies. We need to lean heavily on history and sociology as well. My book asks and answers….
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