Religion Dispatches
…tural disasters, I’m getting at this point only an eerie silence on flood-ravaged Pakistan, which is 98% Muslim. To make matters worse, a local Southern California LDS Church representative who had pledged to join seventy other religious leaders at Friday’s interfaith press conference against Islamaphobia failed to show. Certainly we can do better. Whatever one thinks of the Park51 Islamic community center (and the project is not without pro…
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…ed on my time in four different departments in nearly as many years, is an adapted version of Voltaire’s adage “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” (It was S. G. Tallentyre writing about Voltaire in The Friends of Voltaire who actually said this, but no matter.) It is fundamentally a speech platform, personified in former-CEO Dick Costolo’s favorite description of the service as the “global town squa…
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…Buddhists. We borrow the term reactionary centrist from political theorist Aaron Huertas who defines it as “someone who says they are politically neutral but who usually punches left while sympathizing with the right.” Reactionary centrism, in other words, is a conservative ideological stance that sees and presents itself as transcendent of ideology. Such an approach is clearly at work among white Buddhists who claim to be apolitical while mobiliz…
Read MoreSave the date—Jesus is scheduled to make his second coming appearance on May 21, 2011. That’s according to Harold Camping, founder of Family Radio, Inc. Billboards have been put up around Nashville, Tennessee and other cities like Detroit, Little Rock, Omaha, and Kansas City announcing the second coming. The cheesy billboards remind me of signs teasing a television series or the opening of a Broadway show. Jesus is about to make his big entrance…
Read MoreI appreciate Brent Plate’s analysis in these pages of Indie religious contemplation. But he must know that Americans are newcomers to the history of musical pronouncements on religion, and particularly the criticism of institutional religions. The Saw Doctors — one of my favorite bands — have been astute observers of religious hypocrisy for twenty years now. They have a well-deserved reputation for insulting Catholicism. The band is the project o…
Read More…ber of people attending grew, eventually leading to the creation of the CMSA around 2007, when Khan has already left Hill service and was working in the Bush administration. Like other Congressional staffer organizations, the CMSA does not receive any funding or support from the government; rather the status permits it to use space and provides a structure for leadership. Other groups include Christian and Jewish organizations that host prayer and…
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…our minds. This is why narrative—may it take the form of myth, folklore, parable, or history—has always been such an integral part of religious life and the formation of religious imagination. Historically, stories have been vehicles for moral formation, though their ability to influence the world has been used to subvert hegemonic power as well as to bolster it. Harry Potter is the world’s most popular series of children’s books—and one of the m…
Read More…actually cause Americans—especially younger Americans—to move even further away from organized religion than they have already. By pushing religion into the public sphere, the religious and political right is unintentionally pushing religion out of people’s private hearts and minds, and moving people out of the pews across America. The number of nones (people with no religious preference) is on the rise, with over 20% of all Americans claiming thi…
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…s own dignity that these religions fail to honor, an expression of protest against certain religious tenets, and/or a refusal to align oneself with institutions contributing to the marginalization of gender and sexual minorities. The difference in religious identification appears to reflect thoughts and feelings toward religious institutions more than it does spiritual behavior or beliefs.” But the idea of transgender Christianity still carries sh…
Read More…be inevitable. The toilets themselves are the seatless ones, and the istinjaa’ is just a piece of rubber hose attached to the water spigot. There is also a shower in there, so if necessary, a woman could shower in each toilet stall. Therefore, these elements all combine to make this a place of complete wetness. I’m trusting that it was mostly just water, but I erred here when I chose to bring my purse with my iPad, camera, and money and to leave m…
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