Religion Dispatches
…kah. Each prayer will have from 2-4 rakat. Clearly in sajdah we have the best expression of our status as ‘abd-Allah. But we also stand; in fact, we begin the performance at the stand: the best expression of our status as khalifah of Allah. The bow, or ruku’, after standing, acts to put the whole of the performance in motion, and to point in the direction of that motion, towards God (metaphysically, and the Kaaba in Makkah, physically). The fina…
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…onsibly peddles the falsehoods that abortion providers try to maximize the number of procedures they perform in order to profit, and that fetuses feel pain. The anti-choice activist Carol Everett claims she once worked for an abortion provider that aimed to perform three to five abortions on 13-18 year old girls so they would be accustomed to using abortion as a birth control method into adulthood. Dr. Laube called these claims “pure nonsense,” “p…
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…use, last, not everything is under our control. Walter Brueggemann says it best: “In spite of our best planning, there is an inscrutable mystery about our experience which we cannot master or manipulate.” That includes the mystery of suffering, as Job discovered. Adherents of conspiracy theories and other kinds of foolishness often ascribe far too much power and control to the leading figures of their narratives. It’s a primitive way of thinking:…
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…k that way because he taught the scriptures that homosexuality isn’t God’s best for us. But I always have to throw in that we also teach that God is understanding of our human condition and it’s no different than someone who struggles in other areas of our life: like pride, in my case, I think that’s something that I have to struggle with. The scriptures say we’ve all sinned and are all short of the glory of God. So in that context, that’s how we…
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…nclude a female member). Phillips and others, in discussions on his own website have argued (in keeping with other Reconstructionists), that women should not be allowed to vote since they are “represented” by their husbands in the voting booth. Phillips’ patriarchal “family vision,” with its rigidly proscribed gender norms that homeschooling is designed to reinforce, is described in detail by RD contributor Kathryn Joyce in her book Quiverfull: In…
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…their assault on teaching evolution in science class. Zimmerman thinks the best way to change this mindset is for scientists to step back from the debate and hand the reins over to religious leaders. This Feb. 12 will be Darwin’s 200th birthday. Three days later, as part of Evolution Sunday, a holiday Zimmerman created, pastors around the world will be speaking from the pulpit about Darwin’s contribution to our understanding of the world. Zimmerma…
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…my best friends are gay Republicans. Well, I guess I should say some of my best friends are gay former Republicans. They didn’t leave the party, they tell me. Instead, the party left them with its frog-stepping march to the right-wing fringe over the past few years. These are people who believe in fiscal conservatism, but have seen the Republicans run up record deficits. They like the tax cuts, they say, but have seen Goldwater Republicanism tramp…
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…orse still, the reprehensible actions of the few target and often kill the best people. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was well liked in Libya, and a veteran of postings across the Middle East. He was the kind of person the American government is lucky to have on its side. (I remember, some years back, that a famous Muslim filmmaker, who had made the first big-budget movie about the Prophet Muhammad, was killed by al-Qaeda in one of its typical in…
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…a nonprofit that uses the resources of design to solve social problems, visited my brother’s class in architecture school and described one of the first design contests he held. He asked people to come up with the best design possible for a mobile AIDS clinic for a town in a country in Africa. He posted the deadline, and he waited. He didn’t think anyone would submit anything, but on the day of the contest’s deadline, a delivery man from Federal…
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…ean here the unreconstructed monotheistic God) has no role whatsoever. The best man wins the duel—or rather, the man with the best wand. Now, one could, of course, make the same claims about comic-book sagas like Superman or Batman. Why should Harry Potter have to take any more refuge in the numinous than Kal-El or Bruce Wayne? Well, because there is something intrinsically religious about the Potter series; and I don’t just mean the rab…
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