Religion Dispatches
…those of us whose lifestyles are dependent upon a ‘religious’ devotion to cheap oil. The deepest irony of all is that BP, along with the other oil companies, has come to function as a god. The truth, buried beneath all the oil and punditry, is that our devotion to this false god has led to the suffering of innocents, in the oceans and beaches, in the marshes and ecosystems, and in our communities. We have been slow, too slow by far, to realize th…
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…self bored by dry, ordinary facts and spicing them up with distortions and flights of fancy, he takes shallow, hackneyed fiction and makes it exciting by adding in the truth. Along the way, he can’t resist including some of the Masons’ absurd legends surrounding their supposed origins, and so allows fact, fiction, and myth to blend into a heady mixture. The book reflects not the fear and suspicion often directed towards the Masonic mysteries but r…
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…ith formal, centralized leadership. With access to drug money, oil wealth, cheap weapons, and consumer-grade digital toys, they don’t have to worry that 93% of people in the Muslim world still refuse to condone the 9/11 attacks. No one can control them: not their communities, their politicians, their leading clerics, nor even their ostensible figurehead, bin Laden himself. When forced out of one area, the fighters re-create another in their own im…
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…e the honest mistake and call him “Reverend Robertson.” As host of The 700 Club, he prays for healing (provided your faith overrides your sense of reason and you funnel your fortunes into his pocket). And even though he’s a layman, he preaches his interpretation of the Word of God to an average of one million American viewers daily. Some viewers, like me, watch Pat & Co. for comic relief and research purposes, but many people take this man’s rambl…
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…iar. The worst part of Cain’s pandering is that he used the National Press Club event to try to insert his faith as a buffer into the conversation. Cain, a member of Antioch Baptist church North in Atlanta, Ga, has mentioned his Christian faith on the campaign trail, and has recorded a gospel album. Cain’s singing of “He looked beyond my faults” was, in my opinion, a combination of minstrel show, an Amos and Andy riff without Amos, and a sly admi…
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…no disrespect to anyone else’s idea of “church” to say that the gay dance club was a kind of church for me and for thousands, millions, like me. The club was a place of grace. And there was no real disconnect when some of the younger and grander queens who ruled the dance floor would trip out, eyes blinking, into sabbath sunlight at 9 or 10 a.m. and head straight off to their real church. Praise and yet more praise for all of God’s blessings. So…
Read More…of the strictest country, the official pointed out. Kazakhstan: Ad for Gay Club Provokes Outrage A gay club in Kazakhstan’s largest city is located at the corner of Kurmangazy and Pushkin streets, named after Kazakh composer Kurmangazy Sagyrbayuly and Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. An ad for the club featuring a portrayal of the two men kissing won an international award but has sparked outrage at home. Kazakhstan is a Muslim-majority country; sa…
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…on-care could not be labeled cultural misappropriation, even for a hunting club. But insofar as the Order currently supports the killing of caged birds for the pleasure of affluent citizens (rather than dispassionately culling a herd to sustain the life of the poor), the Order is practicing animal “conservation” in a way that is starkly anathema to the spirit of the ancient text upon which the Latin motto is faithfully based. And to the extent tha…
Read More…he undisclosed ground rules and was denied a place in the cultural studies club. Maynard encountered a problem similar to that of the Harvard cultural studies club. She crafted her prayer to “show respect to all faiths,” even invoking God before any other forces or personages, apparently to welcome her Christian critics. But how can a pluralist show respect to faiths that reject the project of pluralism? The Canadian Supreme Court ruled this week…
Read More…ts as everyone else. There can be no true tolerance until the guy with the club can be convinced to drop his weapon; to realize that no matter how scared he is of the snake, it is the snake that is the victim, and not the one doing the beating. Those who take Maggie’s advice and drop the bomb at the holiday table are not likely to have their minds changed by mere words. Believe me, I have family members like this and even though I have tried to li…
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