Religion Dispatches
…sections of religion and popular culture, I also looked forward to Perry’s new film because I wanted to see how his theological message of hope and faith would sustain his new efforts to address a global concern: the financial crisis. But the centralizing of the white family—which is a departure from Perry’s traditional filmic presentation—not only distanced Perry from his usual target audience of African Americans, it placed large servings of par…
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…contributors below and make up your own mind. — eds For all pieces on the New Zealand terrorist attack, click here. Below are the pieces that directly address the “White Christian Nationalism” question: March 18: Behind New Zealand Terror Attack Is a Problem Bigger Than Islamophobia (Murali Balaji) March 21: White Christian Nationalism May Not Be Religious, But It Is Christian (Murali Balaji) March 29: The White Nationalist Fantasy of Ancient Chr…
Read More…tion for the journey. According to legend, Phoenician explorers called the new land they discovered “Barr Ilu,” “The Continent of God.” The pilgrims coming from England via Leiden, were indeed that—religious pilgrims who longed for a new world in which they could imagine a society without religious persecution. The discovery of water on Mars is a moment in which we can imagine afresh the origins of life. On the one hand, exploration is one of the…
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…trates how a different context for a work of art creates new meaning for a new audience. Today, the civil rights battle over marriage equality becomes the new backdrop for a protest musical peppered with religious imagery at every turn—lesbian and gay folks are left hoping that we may finally be experiencing the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Hair, Circa 1968 The original production of Hair was a departure for the Broadway stage because of its ra…
Read More…rriages between a man and a woman have long been recognised in law in both New Zealand and in those Pacific Island nations. In New Zealand’s case, of course, an amendment to marriage law came into effect in August 2013 – which allows same-sex couples to legally marry. The Way Forward Working Group (WFWG) report makes a precept-upon-precept case for how such civil marriages could be blessed by the church. The Anglican Church in this province is gov…
Read More…LGBT book ban seen as part of struggle over Church’s social influence The New York Times’ Elisabetta Povoledo reported this week on moves by the new conservative mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, to ban 49 children’s books from preschool libraries. There is the story of the male dog who aspired to be a ballerina. The one about the little boy who wanted to be a princess, and a princess who wanted to be a soccer player. The tale of the penguin egg h…
Read More…eligious right wing, there have been low grumblings of protest against the new law, but for a nation where a woman’s hemline or her seat on a public bus can set off a firestorm, the response has been surprisingly muted. Dr. Eli Schussheim, chairman of the pro-life group Efrat, likened the decision to theft, saying that by allocating funding for non-medically necessary abortions, the committee “is stealing… from sick people… and giving the money in…
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…list elites who have planned and prepared for this opportunity to impose a new world order: a new global government with a new economic system. In the spiritual context he will be enacting a Satanic plot to usurp the role and identity of the Messiah and gain the adulation of the world. Wielding great military power this self-aggrandizing human savior will force an end to war and impose a secular humanist paradigm and religious pluralism as a remed…
Read More…guing that a council of religious jurists was more qualified to select the new shaykh al-Azhar than the president. He is also a member of the NDP’s policy committee, which is headed by Gamal Mubarak, one of the president’s sons. Al-Tayyib claims that his comment about the “Shi‘i trap” noted above is akin to the Iranian government’s approach toward Sunnis in Iran. He said that he would continue to welcome Shi‘i students at al-Azhar in order to “i…
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…bad taste, has already dubbed the arrest of several prominent Brooklyn and New Jersey rabbis last week the case of the “kosher nostra”. It is an ugly story, and not just how the Post tells it: alleged corruption among ultra-Orthodox leadership in the form of money laundering through charities and, even worse, strong-armed trafficking in human organs. Not two years after the breaking of the Agriprocessors scandal, we have another searing example of…
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