Religion Dispatches
…nt levels of “strictness.” For example, if the modern state ever wishes to use racial categories in making policy, then, because of our checkered and very bloody racial history, these discriminating laws and policies will be subject to the very strictest scrutiny. (That is what has bedeviled affirmative action policies of late; even using such categories for the noblest of purposes is Constitutionally suspect, at least at the outset.) If the state…
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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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…ached multiple times by Cuban government officials asking us not to go because it would cause trouble [with the U.S.] for them. It was a delicate place, because we were a group of Americans and didn’t want to cause trouble for the Cuban government, because Guantánamo is a U.S. naval base on their land without their consent.[5] We camped on a big hill where you can kind of see the naval base and prison in the distance. We did all our solidarity act…
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…is transmission isn’t mystical but is both genetic and cultural. Just as abuse begets abuse and addiction begets addiction, prejudice begets prejudice. In the Christian Scripture, Paul talks about the need to reckon not just with sinful individual nature but with “principalities and powers,” a theological way of describing the impersonal, menacing aspects of cultural and institutional power. In White Too Long, I summarized some remarkable research…
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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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…ally passed, and the relief among the many young women and people with uteruses I knew was palpable. For many people who use birth control not just for contraceptive purposes, but for health problems like endometriosis, knowing an employer couldn’t opt out of coverage was a breath of fresh air. My monthly birth control that I take for a medical condition went from $45 per month (not chump change for a young, broke person) to zero. Knowing that in…
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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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…comedies in which Chico and Harpo are running a slick little scam. They’ve used a fishing pole to hook a dollar bill. Chico uses the money to buy something. The seller then pockets the bill. As soon as he starts to walk off, Harpo deftly pulls back on his pole, retrieving the money and delivering it to Chico: who then turns around and uses it to scam the next customer. How many of our charitable contributions are like that? Even after we’ve handed…
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