Religion Dispatches
…t his only tweet 5 days before the assault to become visible for the journalistic research he anticipated. He produced a video summary of his “Declaration” and encouraged his contacts to translate and further distribute both the images and text. Whereas this obsessively curated selection of his motives, background, and planning was clearly addressed to the media, Breivik, who was deeply concerned about keeping control of his public persona after t…
Read More
…hey are God’s answers. In his view, regardless of whether you are a “capitalist” or a “socialist,” a conservative or a liberal, self-reliance, not government reliance, is the key, since “when you handle your money God’s ways, it will change your life.” If we follow God’s plan, as explained with liberal quotations from the Book of Proverbs and any number of recent self-help authors, then and only then will we rebuild the wealth of our nation and re…
Read More…shire’s John Lynch, and Washington’s Christin Gregoire), because official praying events now appear to be a prerequisite for high office. Still, though, Perry’s very short gubernatorial guest list is a sign of his event’s, uh, shall we say politely, problematic nature. It’s just too bad that no governor seems willing to come right out and say that….
Read More…religious things, like our need for attachment or our hatred of The Other. List them as fast as you can! Don’t let on that there are other dimensions of religion that aren’t being considered here, which plenty of established non-scientific fields are investigating. Instead, try another callback!! (Did you notice that I just made a callback to the callback? Did you chuckle? Then you know it works! Callbacks are important.) 4. Wrap it up. You’ll wan…
Read More
…ong the things we’d intended to do in July and August of 2003—an ambitious list that included things like getting married, moving to a new state, buying our first house, starting a doctoral program (me), and trying to find a job (my husband)—we had not planned also to conceive a child. It seemed like a bad time to do that, under the circumstances. But there our son was, announcing his presence with a second pink line on a pee-stick, in stubborn de…
Read More
…aphy, mise-en-scene, soundtrack, and editing—have much more in common with Korean Buddhist-themed films than they do with anything produced by his compatriots in Hollywood. I’m thinking here of Why has the Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? (Yong-Kyun Bae, 1989), Passage to Buddha (Sun-Woo Jang, 1994), and Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, … and Spring (Ki-Duk Kim, 2003), a list that could go on. Meditative images of minute dimensions of life meet soar…
Read More
…antorum (okay, this last one is short on charisma but people still seem to listen anyway)—is critical to the success of this religious movement, with the primary sacred textual sources legitimating the moral universe drawn from the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. What is the operative creed for Republicanity? This is, by no means, an exhaustive list: Money rules and wealth is the greatest good; the natural world is at the disposal o…
Read More…anwhile, Perry’s supporters are going public. After news broke of televangelist James Robison’s secret meetings with Perry and religious conservative leaders, Robison released a complete list of those leaders on his blog. Referring to his September 2010 and June 2011 meetings as “supernatural gatherings,” Robison was obviously trying to rebut speculation that the group was supporting Perry for president, but rather that they were just feeling the…
Read More
…epent of “any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin”—a list that includes transgressions as varied as usury, “undue delay of marriage,” and “immoderate use of meat.” (What now for patrons of Brazilian steakhouses?) Of course, the struggle for full acceptance of LGBT people began way before efforts to repeal the so-called “fidelity and chastity” rule. Many folks mark the 1974 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church as the…
Read More…mporary American conservatism as “triple fundamentalism:” The increasingly-Southernized American Right has transferred the fundamentalist Protestant mentality from the sphere of religion to the spheres of law and the economy. Protestant fundamentalism is now joined by constitutional fundamentalism and market fundamentalism. I have long argued that the way in which conservatives like David Barton, and in fact the tea partiers in general, read the C…
Read More