Religion Dispatches
…. The sacred temples are sealed off from nature—no sunlit windows or fresh-air conduits. Mormonism, a movement that began with an outdoorsy prophet who encountered God in a woodlot, who used magical rocks to translate scriptures buried in a holy hill, who led the Latter-day Saints to a unique Center Place in North America on the borders of the Lamanites, is now managed by a global corporation that manufactures generic, fungible, sacred space with…
Read More…of presenting himself as conservative but who “legislates as a liberal,” which would certainly be news to actual liberals. What is happening here is clear: this is yet another right winger using extreme statements to get his free 15 minutes of air time and to rally his religious right base who fervently believe that homosexuality is akin to bestiality or any other perversion of sexual activity. When it comes time for Arizonans to go to the polls,…
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…the balance of power in his relationship with Joseph Adama, all up in the air. Until next week… Diane Winston______________________ Who is Zoe? What is Zoe? Who or What was Zoe? That’s the trinity (yes, Salman, it was a sledgehammer)—or, more accurately, the trifecta at the heart of “Rebirth,” this week’s episode of Caprica. Zoe’s identity was on many minds as we saw her conjured in the Cylon’s red-tinged memories, Ben Stark’s mementos, Lacy’s…
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I didn’t expect to experience Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air as a holiday parable, but that is how it turned out. Rootless and isolated, the slick but fragile George Clooney character has no home for the holidays: he realizes too late in life that his prized non-attachment is not of the healthy Buddhist variety—that it’s a kind living death. This season—the holiday season—has long been a much-feared red zone for lonely people and those who worry a…
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…like experiences are offered. This attraction is described on the school’s website as a “journey through the Museum [that] takes you on a Walk Through The Gospel, with a stirring three-dimensional presentation of the Christian message.” But that is only after you have experienced an “encounter [with] one of the loveliest and most fascinating presentations of the basic Christian message in The Cross of The Millennium. From here, you’ll enter a majo…
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…Studies at Drew University. Nadler, the final audience member at the microphone, urged Ramadan “to rise above accusations of ‘doublespeak’ and condemn unambiguously the rise in religiously sanctioned and state-supported anti-Semitism throughout the Muslim world.” Ramadan, in response, repeated his oft-stated claim that anti-Semitism is contrary to the basic claims of Islam: that, more precisely, it is un-Islamic to hate a Jew for being a Jew. He…
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…a spiritual one against the most powerful. Go to the very next verse, and pairing this passage with a tank becomes even more embarrassing. It calls for a “belt of truth,” a “breastplate of righteousness,” and, astonishingly, “the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.” The author of Ephesians may have been remembering Isaiah 26:3, which promises, “You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.” But, i…
Read More…n Arabic language specialist. Two days after she arrived at the Tal Afar air base prison, Peterson’s unit was ordered to apply “enhanced interrogation techniques” she considered inhumane and torturous. Alyssa said she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t be two people. She couldn’t be herself—a devout Mormon, a person of faith—while implementing torture. She was officially reprimanded for showing “empathy” to Iraqi detainees and reassigned to anot…
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…the organization, handing the reins over to Patrick P. Caruana, a retired Air Force Lieutenant General, shortly after the largest downsizing in the organization’s history. It’s much too early to predict that either Focus on the Family or the religious right will go away, but it’s very difficult to pass the mantle of charismatic leadership from one generation to the next, especially when the founder is so closely associated with the organization….
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…people and work, no matter how well intentioned to which the label might fairly apply, the label is also used by many of us to dismiss information and analyses that make us uncomfortable even when they legitimately push the boundaries of our understanding of modern politics, business and government. But as we address our own discomfort in the face of such material, we need to remind ourselves that investigative journalism discomfits the author as…
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