Religion Dispatches
…though this, the men would hover around the tent entries, send notes, make phone calls, actually get their phone cords recharged, and send food and drink through every possible opening in the tent. As far as I could tell, it was always the men hanging around our tent and not the women hanging around the men’s tent. Pretty funny if you think about it. They were like lost puppies without their women. Yet patriarchy would have us think they are the m…
Read More…his staff was aided by parents, make no mistake about that. In addition, a number of senior citizens are reported to have been injected with poison, but it’s impossible to determine how many. This leaves the problem of how many adults voluntarily drank the “Kool-Aid.” Suicide is, of course, called into question if they were surrounded by armed guards, though the guards themselves died at the end by ingesting poison. The presence of hypodermic need…
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…or sell for under two dollars). And unlike the internet, the space of the iPhone feels not just private, but personal. Yes, the iPhone might be my means of connection with the world—it is, after all, a phone—but it is also my own little password-locked garden that I carry with me wherever I go. Moreover, I can remake the landscape with a few flicks of my fingers whenever I choose. As a result, the territory necessarily mixes the sacred and the pro…
Read More…ch of Christian denominations working with us now.” Discussions during the phone bank covered the Golden Rule, whether the Leviticus view of homosexuality as an abomination also extended to eating shrimp, and how civil marriage licenses are distinct from religious weddings. Most of the calls lasted mere seconds, with people not home or not interested. After an hour working the phones, Scott Holley, 33, cheerfully noted that he had become “unfazed…
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…thryn Lofton has described secularism as a “kaleidoscopic buffet” in which spiritual seekers choose their religious and spiritual practices. Lofton calls upon scholars to interrogate what plausibility structures serve as dominating, even compulsory, guides for spiritual seekers awash in a world where traditional religious doctrines lack exclusive grip. According to Lofton, Oprah—who tells her audience what to buy, what to wear, what to read, and w…
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…r pledge cards and enlist volunteers to canvass potential voters and staff phone banks. He said that the positive responses to his phone pitch for Prop 47 were an unexpected surprise. “It’s been amazing to see how many people were supporting this,” Hakim said. “There are more people that think about justice than I realized!” The momentum for collaborative Muslim faith-based activism around Prop 47 began to build earlier this year, when Jawaid and…
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…nd are willing to take the risk, freeing themselves up and exploring their spirituality in different ways.’ I think eventually a large number of those people will re-affiliate in some way, shape, or form—but when they do, the actual institutions of religion will be very different because of the demands those people make on new kinds of churches. I look at that whole arc of people who are leaving church because of the failure of the institution, an…
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…to Mina, etc. There is still no address for the hotels, but a local phone number. There is also information about processing customs at Jeddah, meeting the tour guide, and information that says “the group” will proceed to Makkah—which means the first will have to wait for the last person, which is the beginning of feeling like you are a group. They even include suggestions to “get to know” your fellow travelers. I still had no idea what were the…
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…the large evangelical charity Samaritan’s Purse—has never been as grifty a customer as Sekulow. But he’s been no less a culture warrior for conservative evangelicals, and no less a stout defender of Pres. Trump. This does not sit well with everyone: The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is looking for venues in London and Liverpool for Franklin Graham’s upcoming UK tour. Management of ACC Liverpool said Jan. 24 that it was dropping plans to ho…
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…an extension of the evangelical “family values” that they held dear. As a service employer, Moreton told RD, Wal-Mart learned that paying public obeisance to the value of “service”—a concept transplanted neatly from Christian good works to working hard in the checkout line—made good business sense. “Everyone wants to feel that what’s important to them can be serviced in their labor,” Moreton said. Wal-Mart, she noted, “managed very cannily” to a…
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