Religion Dispatches
…America for a select Brown Muslim population. Still African-American Muslims outnumber them, and face double invisibility and erasure: from within and from without. So, if you ever wonder why I don’t comment on some of the “top” stories in the news about Islam in America, I intentionally try not to respond to sensationalism. I don’t comment about a story if the story already gets enough media attention and if the story does not help script the dy…
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…h successive news story about another gay teen hanging himself, shooting himself, or jumping off a bridge. As I saw the faces of these young victims and imagined the family and friends left to cope with the chaos created by their suicides, my lamentation began to morph into an indignant fury. My indignation grew as I shifted my gaze from the individual acts of suicide to the contexts in which these suicides are set. Suicide happens for numerous re…
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…an industrial-sized kitchen bowl, kneading a ball of dough so large it seems she might lose an arm. Over the caption “Franciscan retreat,” the image forecasts that Life’s Catholic coverage would differ from Time’s in a number of ways. First and most obviously, it depicts a woman; second and perhaps less so, it depicts work. The lives of Catholics, the picture says, do not require the stillness or the clerical luxury depicted in many of Time’s cov…
Read More…Temple opened a new chapterhouse headed by Jex Blackmore (Satanic pseudonyms help to curb death threats). Blackmore has been especially active in opposing Michigan’s informed consent law. More chapter houses are opening in San Antonio and other cities around the country. The Detroit Free Press featured an interview with one Tom Raspotnik, an independent Satanist. Raspotnik described himself as a “tea party” Satanist who opposed the progressivism…
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…was the worst. Jim and Tammy were nothing if not provocative. They put themselves at the center of some of the biggest divides in American religion and culture, which meant that they had no shortage of supporters and critics on either side, particularly with regard to the prosperity gospel. What alternative title would you give the book? My working title was Pressed Down, Shaken Together, which comes from one of the favorite Bible verses of prosp…
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…, that exists in the same manner when speaking about the Jews, or the Muslims, or the Buddhists. The noun doesn’t really tell us anything about individuals and communities, and the adjectival use may be descriptive but can be also be applied across political, cultural, ethnic, and theological spectrums. “Native American,” like the term “Hindu” as noted above, is one of those labels that simultaneously misrepresents reality and creates it for commu…
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…everage Eastern Christian misfortune to its own advantage. The Crusades themselves are an excellent example, but Catholic power grabs in places like Ukraine during the 16th century around the fall of Constantinople also demonstrate this problem. Which brings us back to Thursday’s consecration. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was free from Original Sin, is not a doctrine shared between the Catholic and Or…
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…n composed by New York state officials to be read in public school classrooms at the start of the school day. Lee said the prayer “is not an establishment of any particular religion, but an acknowledgment of a truth, and a debt we owe God.” The Supreme Court, with only a single dissenting vote, disagreed. The Court’s decision appealed to the same founders that Beck and Barton are claiming as their inspiration. It has been argued that to apply the…
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…ate and to prosecute.” For many years, Orthodox rabbis have dissuaded victims and their families from going to the secular authorities with their claims of abuse. But as the Catholic Church has discovered at great cost, suppressing abuse allegations only makes the issue more damaging to the religious institution when it is finally exposed. At the recent sentencing of an Orthodox abuser in Brooklyn, the mother of one victim, who did not wish to be…
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…o “blasphemous content.” The IHEU reports being contacted by an increasing number of secularist groups organizing on Facebook, including groups in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, and Sudan. In all of this, the United States is an anomaly since it rejects even laws against religious hate speech, which were found in 36 of 45 European states in 2011. It’s the best place in the wo…
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