Religion Dispatches
…to become better organized as a political force, even as they increase in number. The major impediment to that kind of organization is the fact that it is very difficult for secularists to conceive of themselves in tribal terms. Most tribes, whether of nations or ethnicities or sports fandom, can easily demarcate their membership—it’s the people who look like us, or talk like us, or dress like us. Tribes organized around religious belief have rit…
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…at detail about the spiritual foundations of the Grateful Dead universe. Reflecting upon the music and message of the 1960s, Garcia said, “For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part.” For Garcia, the Grateful Dead’s music could serve as a “signpost to a new consciousness” by challenging the listener to become “an understanding molecule in evolution, a conscious tool of the uni…
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…ith assault rifles—you know, the Three Percenters were there in their camouflage and assault rifles. What happened as you were standing at that intersection on Saturday afternoon? It was late-morning, early Saturday afternoon. Rev. Traci Blackmon and I were holding public witness. We had been in the streets, just speaking to people, to everyone. We were in full clergy gear—my stole had a resistance fist on it, and “Black Lives Matter.” Traci’s int…
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…disgusting. They don’t appreciate having said feces smeared all over their floors and carpets, although I’m sure a great number of non-Muslims appreciate these artifacts from guests’ shoes. As mentioned previously, shoes are also used to discipline people. Belt-whuppins are difficult when men’s traditional garb does not include belts. Shoes/slippers/etc. are far more common. They are used to help “enlighten” insouciant, arrogant, oblivious, destru…
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…teach us. Caitlin Corning explains in The Celtic and Roman Traditions: Conflict and Consensus in the Early Medieval Church that, even though at one point historians may have had a romantic attachment to the idea, more recently “scholars have abandoned the term Celtic Church believing it to be too closely associated with inaccurate ideas.” However, as her study makes clear, the general public is in no way allergic to this constructed history given…
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…-image as misunderstood and persecuted. Thus they can discount Robertson’s flaws within frames like “the sincere leader with feet of clay” (who, like King David, models repentance and rehabilitation) or the “truth-teller quoted out of context” (who, like Christ, will triumph in the end.) Meanwhile, beyond an NCR subculture, sensational images of Robertson as a fringe figure—an extreme loose cannon—underplay continuities between him and relatively…
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