Religion Dispatches
…y as a critique of mythology. This is why this film is worth watching: because it shows how the use of mythological structures and elements can be used against other, perhaps more oppressive stories. Propositional logic (the kind Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens use) offers straightforward, non-fictional language that makes truth claims and offers critiques. That may offer a viable critique of the ideologies of myth, yet here…
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…and ideas that are likely to impact our future. Jay Cornell: Don’t be confused by the word “disinformation.” The publisher is Disinformation Books, which publishes various kinds of edgy content, and their use of the term is tongue-in-cheek. We assure you that our book includes no disinformation. LW: Transcendence has been the province of religion, historically — the whole promising-of-immortality thing. What about the idea that transhumanism, the…
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…anyone shows up. For space reasons I won’t go into The Family’s multiple abuses of the religious tax exemption. Many RD readers will be familiar with the story of their notorious townhouse on C Street in Washington, which for many years got away with being a tax-exempt “church” even though it actually functioned as a private club for powerful members of Congress who paid a nominal rent to live there. But this abuse pales compared to the major crim…
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…didn’t know those terms. Yet scholars seem to be more rigid about similar uses of language related to sex. I would also make use of recent literature on aspiring saints and feigned sanctity, clarifying what seems to be less than obvious, that religion and sexuality are not either/or categories, but both/and. I have seen your book in quite surprising places: in women’s bookstores and big chain stores, on syllabi in religious studies, history, and…
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…BT persons to despair—in fact, that acting upon this theory is a leading cause of the astronomical rates of substance abuse, homelessness, and even suicide among an entire swath of God’s people—then you may want to rethink your theory. And if you care about your theories more than you care about the lessons of compassionate attention to your LGBT neighbors, you may want to rethink your claim that you love them. And if extracting rigid gender and s…
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…the legitimate transition of power on those lines—and it hasn’t softened. Between Jericho Marches and the repeated use of medieval and explicitly Christian calls to violence, America is already there. Once you decide that violence is the appropriate solution to maintain theocratic dominance, the guns you’ve made holy and stockpiled become a threat. This is radicalization. And for every “lone wolf” narrative that gets word-vomited out every time t…
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…religious thinking and rational thinking. Throughout the book McWhorter’s use of religion only serves one purpose: it’s shorthand for backwards, closed-minded, illogical and irrational thinking. But it also betrays McWhorter’s own messiah complex in relation to Black people. To make this point, McWhorter invokes the well-worn trope of Jewish legalism when he states: “The Elect are our Pharisees. In fostering antiracist ideas that actually harm bl…
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…Song, and it deals with all the data amassed by the survey that I couldn’t use in Then Sings My Soul—over 700 fans and professionals responded, generating more than 3,000 separate prose-based responses to various prompts. The Gospel Sensibility is grounded in listening to and analyzing the voices of Southern gospel music. In the process, the book aims to provide the first sustained critical account of how people collectively and individually use S…
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…ht God wanted you to live—by you, too! (Whoever you are.) And so we didn’t use artificial contraception. We used natural family planning (i.e. charts and thermometers), because we did not want to form ourselves to be the sort of people who were closed off to intrusive, vulnerable life. That was the logic. You use artificial contraception, and it might just form you into the kind of person who is not willing to be intruded upon by the very vulnerab…
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…eople have written to me to tell me that they would like to burn down my house, because of my championing of religion); and I have had a lot of abuse from people because I write positively about Islam; some Christians in Holland objected vociferously when I was awarded the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Medal; Catholics in the UK have hated my work. But I am writing about contentious issues that arouse a good deal of passion. If I did not att…
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