Religion Dispatches
…he find an LGBT-affirming clergy, or at least someone who doesn’t have an online trove of sermons denouncing sexual sin, or, barring that, someone who has repented from homophobia, to put it in religious terms? The answer is, of course, all those options are available to him (and many observers, including the Washington Monthly’s Ed Kilgore, have started making suggestions for Giglio replacements). Recall 2009, when Obama was faced with oppositi…
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…where the publicly negotiated ritual meaning emerges: in the explosion of online debates about whether or not Abbasi could have helped; why other bystanders did not; what motivations the killer may have had; and—most importantly—what would we do in the same situation. No Moral Payoff For all this, though, I don’t think the image should have been posted. Nobody questions whether or not the image is powerful. And I don’t dispute the journalistic ri…
Read More…rity with the larger community, organizing candlelight vigils and creating online groups to spread the word about the Wisconsin attack. My most fervent hope is that just as the internet might be transforming the very notion of trauma by speaking the unspeakable in real time, it can also start addressing the very deep-rooted prejudices that create such horrific episodes as the Wisconsin gurdwara attack and 1984 in the first place. A minority commun…
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…Post. Different Standards At Work The day after CT’s article was published online, the Post published a long piece titled, “Sources in ‘Second Coming Christ Controversy’ Face Scrutiny,” followed days later by another with the less subtle headline, “Christianity Today Writer Ken Smith Is Founder of a Company Fined for Deceptive Business Practices; With Child Porn Ties.” The main thrust of the first of the two Post pieces was to disprove the allegat…
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…r and a person void of principles is impossible. Between the two rests a misunderstanding that is neither religious nor ideological, but psychological and almost biological.” The idea that someone with different principles suffers from psychological afflictions was a frequent theme during the Pussy Riot trial. As Masha Lipton of The New Yorker noted, during the trial all three Pussy Riot members were found to be suffering from so-called psychologi…
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…f the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell “has infiltrated our military, where service members and chaplains are facing recrimination for their sincerely held moral and religious beliefs,” and, according to Right Wing Watch: claimed that the left “will snuff out the light of freedom” by “rewriting the history of America,” and warned that the health care reform law is “an unbiblical threat” that violated the Ten Commandments. Akin even believes that Me…
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…tion and boundary maintenance. The use of this approach often leads to a misunderstanding of a given religion (usually various new religious movements) and we see a good example of these failings in Matthews’ interpretations of Burning Man spirituality—as well as his representation of Paganism. This includes his confused distinction between various forms of Paganism, and his faulty critique of Paganism, claiming that it “denies the dignity of man,…
Read More…essed to find evidence of the existence a California real estate developer online. What’s more, if whoever made the film actually spent $5 million on it, the expenditure hardly shows in the content, acting, or production values. Amateurish doesn’t even begin to describe the 13-minute trailer on YouTube. The film was promoted by anti-Muslim zealot Terry Jones. The WSJ reported yesterday: The film’s 52-year-old writer, director and producer, Sam Bac…
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…acticing Buddhists, not to mention for his millions of spiritually-curious online followers? But his atheistic-toned words should not come as a surprise. Back in June, he tweeted that he is “increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.” Slowly, HHDL’s social media team has been tweaking the guru’s image to better align with our more secular views. Westerners are d…
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…in such a pronounced way over a long, hot summer of discontent across the country, it seems reasonable that Christian believers should be called—by Christians themselves and those of other or no faith tradition—to enact the commitments of their faith in the service of nonviolence and practices of justice and compassion that support it. It’s been a more than a generation since Christian churches—black churches, for the most part—were seen, at the…
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