Religion Dispatches
…y minority opinion. Michael Peroutka didn’t miss out on the presidency because his supporters were ghettoized. He lost because a whole lot of people wanted someone else to be president instead of Peroutka. And having a minority opinion can be, you know, fine! I’ve been told I hold many such opinions myself. But it’s a little bit disingenuous to then say, “What’s this? My uncompromising belief in something almost nobody else believes or comprehe…
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…me to wash with water in addition to drying with toilet paper every time I use the toilet. This is known as istinjaa’. In my fundamentalist days, I used to carry my own little cosmetic bottle to fill at the sink before entering a public toilet outside of the Muslim world. But in my minimalist old days, I may suffer the loss, but I manage without it. That’s why I love bathrooms in the Muslim world, which tend to have this nifty little hose attached…
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…o. What is more, one feature of ritual is that the “message” is not self encoded. That is why I keep making a distinction between this and what we mostly understand when we use the word prayer in English. Prayer is all about our immediate status. “Help me get through this”, “Give me an A on the exam”, “make her heart turn to love me”, “Grant me a successful hajj.” etc. Worship responds to a higher level in fact, the highest level of formality. Eve…
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…me journals and mimeographs from the 1960s and 1970s. What’s your next book? 2014 was a year with a lot of controversies surrounding monuments. I’m interested in the way monuments are used to inscribe particular histories and ideas of polity onto the land. I’m also interested in the way rituals are used to construct and change those meanings. The connection between ritual, sacred space, and narrative runs through a lot of my work. In my next book…
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…f freedom of religious practice. In France, no such complementary relation between secular and religious freedom exists. Laïcité is the kind of secularism that is anti-religion, anti-religious expression, and anti-religious identity. They are the ones that give secularism such a bad name in most parts of the world that still consider religion a part of identity. A really good book on this particular aspect is called Beyond the Politics of the Veil…
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…irm boundaries. If that issue concerns institutional religion, so much the better, because the language of limits and hierarchies is already prominent in that sphere. That, I suspect, is the main reason evangelical Protestants are so eager to support the Catholic bishops even when a majority of the Catholic laity don’t support their bishops. A Conservative Quest for Absolute Truth Every time religion collides with politics and produces controvers…
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…issue. Part of the intent of the book is to give people the words they can use when someone challenges them about being supportive they have some notion of what to say. My hope is to give them a sample of the kinds of words they can use when they are challenged. Why is marriage so important for gay and lesbian people, and why should straight people be supportive? This is about achieving full and equal rights, and it has as much to do with respect…
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…Israel’s conception of gender on the basis of this version of the text because no Israelite ever purposefully wrote this version of the text—it got here accidentally. Maintaining the assumption that there are no typos in the Bible is a fair starting point for rabbinic argument, but Sameth should use that assumption to make interpretations that allow Jewish communities to hold a more expansive views of gender instead of using it to reconstruct the…
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…bishops, can still teach and believe what they wish. No one forces them to use contraception. Rather, it is employees of Catholic institutions, including janitors and housekeepers, whose rights to make their own decisions about health care are impinged upon. Blaming the victim is an old trick, but, in this case, few people are buying it. Not Religious Liberty, but Religious Influence Religious liberty language is attractive, especially in an elect…
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…e church down the street (while the rest of the family “overreacts” at her use—or misuse—of the word). Madea’s home and neighborhood serve as an introduction to black culture for the Needleman family, who enter a “museum for blackness” when they arrive at Madea’s house and experience the discomfort of plastic coverings on the sofa, or the inability to sit on the porch after certain hours. Perry’s exhibitions are not much fun, to say the least, whe…
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