Religion Dispatches
…g members of his unit from a firefight in Iraq in 2006. By recognizing and participating in the richness of America’s diversity, both men understand the threat that unchecked speculation and generalizations can cause. Speaking to the argument that fear of profiling is what allowed Hasan to go undetected in the first place, Marc Lynch (aka “Abu Aardvark”) believes this is not a question of “political correctness,” but of preserving what values defi…
Read More…learning from our colleagues and exploring these complex histories over a number of years, we have found that religious liberty is not a single, stable principle existing outside of history, as it is often depicted (particularly in policy circles in North America and Europe and by many academics invested in promoting religious freedom). It is, rather, an inescapably context-bound, polyvalent concept unfolding within divergent histories in differi…
Read More
…k, who had served as president of the Mormon faith’s women’s organization, participated in a pro-Trump rally in October. This endorsement appeared to give permission for many Mormons to support the Republican nominee, and Trump’s lead increased throughout the state. On election day, Donald Trump won Utah easily, as his vote total nearly doubled those received by McMullin and Hillary Clinton. The extent of Mormon support for Trump is debatable. Pew…
Read More
…er Sherlock Holmes, something with lots of clues but no clear-cut resolution: an early 20th century scandal, a whodunit. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I’m tempted to call on your readers for suggestions, much as the filmmaker, Cecil B. DeMille, years before, had called on movie-goers to participate in a contest to come up with the most compelling answer to the question: “What is the most vital modern problem suitable for picturizing?” Contestants w…
Read More
…rights by forcing the church to choose between its religious identity and participation in a government benefit program. In an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court held “the Department’s policy expressly discriminates against otherwise eligible recipients by disqualifying them from a public benefit solely because of their religious character… such a policy imposes a penalty on the free exercise of religion that triggers the most exacting s…
Read More
…n been noted that Trump is turning minority voters more firmly against the Republican party, an alliance that’s likely to endure. What’s less remarked upon is what a gender-based split among religious voters would do. If the usual Democratic gender gap begins to replicate itself among conservative white women, it will deny Republicans support among a swing vote (Catholics) and perhaps even their base (Evangelicals and Mormons). That’s a real possi…
Read More
…re two dominant models of analysis: number crunching and psychology. Greenspan was a number cruncher, says Brooks, and unfortunately, human psychology caught up with him. Greenspan saw real estate values continuing to soar with no end in sight and allowed himself to be persuaded that they would never stop rising, and certainly would never fall. So he never had to think about petty psychological realities, like a crisis of confidence, never mind an…
Read More
…t Rich lived with the hope that, paradoxically, she could find something expansive in the particularity—something inside Jewish tradition that operated against that same tradition’s more troubling parochialisms, something that connected her to all of humanity. She refused to let the tradition go until it blessed her—and others with her. In her 2003 essay, “Jewish Days and Nights,” published first in a collection titled Wrestling with Zion, Rich re…
Read More
…without successes, some of the issues raised about climate change over the past three decades, “are now a part of the business plans of many corporations.” “We have a problem in the auto sector,” Berry emphasized, however, “where our members have had advanced a prophetic position, if you will, that the auto companies refused to listen to.” She points to the issue of fuel efficiency, and observed that the car companies have now entire product lines…
Read More
…ute (or not) to that. How do religious schools and volunteer groups expose participants to the world? Who does it benefit and whom does it leave out? At times, the structures of the academy can act as a disincentive. Our disciplines are organized around categories and silos that don’t reflect how people really live today or the work we have to do understand the world we live in. To change this, you have to be in conversation with the right kind of…
Read More