Religion Dispatches
…alled for an increase of a hundred thousand troops, which would double the number presently there. Yet it will still be half of the numbers of Russian troops that the former Soviet Union had deployed in Afghanistan—and it lost the war, dragging much of the Soviet economy down with it. A similarly dismal prognosis is in store for America’s continuing presence in Afghanistan. Moreover, the persistence of US troops in the region will continue to prov…
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…es. Is it an existential framework in itself—something that participants in 12-step groups find without necessarily referencing religion or spirituality and that the non-religious have sorted out in other ways—rather than its structuring in specifically religious terms that is psychologically beneficial? An atheist friend put it this way: “Maybe SBNRs are going nuts because, on one frequency, they keep thinking there’s got to be something else, an…
Read More…ng forward a Marriage Equality Bill, which will be debated in the Senate on 18 June, and will go to a vote on 12 November.” BuzzFeed’s Lester Feder examined the potential impact of the vote in other countries, including Italy — the only Western European nation that provides no legal recognition to same-sex couples – where Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has promised a vote on civil union legislation by the end of the summer, and Germany, where Prime M…
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…then bought up by Bantam Books and re-branded Choose Your Own Adventure in 1980. An initial marketing push gave 100,000 copies of The Cave of Time to librarians, who loved the concept and the effect it had of getting kids to actually sit down and read. Selling for $2.95 apiece, more than 50 titles were published over the next three years, and about 30 million copies were printed. Connoisseurs have noted the differences between Packard and Montgom…
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…ere the dominant ethnic group in the multi-ethnic Balkans. However, between 1299 and 1453, the the Ottoman Empire conquered much of the Orthodox Christian world—including the Serbian Empire—and the Albanians converted to Islam, greatly elevating their status in an empire in which Muslims were most certainly at the top of the pecking order. This is the origin of much of the anti-Albanian sentiment, not only in Serbia, but throughout the Balkans. It…
Read More…e for their unwillingness to put their reassurances in writing, proposed a number of amendments. So did other legislators, such that by the time SB-1433 was scheduled to be voted on, it was groaning under the weight of amendments. But the real turnaround came when Speaker Steele proposed an amendment to an amendment that, in essence, would have given teeth to the reassurances that the Oklahoma bill would do no more than the Missouri language. Tha…
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…xistence in this country. In 2017 Donald Trump wants to ban Muslims, but in 1776, the founding fathers wanted to welcome them. Muslims, though a minority, have been present in the United States from the very beginning. Historians of slavery estimate that as much as a third of slaves may have been Muslim and some even fought in the revolutionary war like Yusuf ben Ali. Thomas Jefferson kept a Qur’an near his bedside and the other framers were adama…
Read MoreAccording to new census figures, the number of people reporting that they are living with a same-sex partner has risen 52 percent in the last decade. That’s almost 902,000 people who are living all across the United States. Even here in my own incredibly conservative state of South Carolina, the number of same-sex couples increased and a quarter of them are raising children. It’s those kinds of facts that have right-wing media like the Christian…
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…ttendance has varied over the years, but it is close now to where it was in 1940 and 1950.” That same survey showed, “Americans’ assessment of the importance of religion in their lives generally has been stable over the past four decades.” As Pew continues to release its data over the course of the coming year, it might well find more changes than Gallup has in these other measures of religiosity, but the relative stability of these other markers…
Read More…what’s going on, but too few seem capable of saying it. We now have a fair number of political and civic leaders who are willing to say the word trauma and talk about the all-pervasive violence in this culture, not to mention the extent of mental disturbance and the fact that American civilians have more assault rifles in their possession than does the U.S. military. All well and good. But we have too few leaders who will talk about the deeper roo…
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