Religion Dispatches
…told his fellow settlers that “we shall be as a city on a hill.” Explicit parallels with the Israelites filled their early sermons – the ocean crossing as a kind of Exodus, the wilderness all around them filled with natives to be dispossessed so that a godly nation could arise in the American wilderness. Time and again, New England clergy (Jeremiahs of their own time and place)railed at their compatriots, lamenting their falling-away from the pie…
Read More…ca sold out very cheaply, for sneakers and cheeseburgers.” Another time he paralleled the product with piety. “I think this species had great, great promise, with this great upper brain that we have, and I think we squandered it on God and Mammon.” Most remembrances of Carlin have lingered on his wicked wordplay and obscenity. As Slate’s Joshua David Mann remarked, “He got almost 30 years of mileage out of examinations of the words cornhole and di…
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…nd the world kept him learning languages and incorporating different cultural realities at a time when most Americans were just as monolingual and xenophobic as Europeans thought they were. He was elected to lead his abbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, at the age of 36; and was tapped as abbot primate of the Benedictines worldwide at 40. He engaged the task vigorously in a distinguished way, traveling the world to learn from and network with people vi…
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…the lives of those who are going. The idea that they might experience any Fallows-like guilt or have any second thoughts about their degree of insulation is simply not an issue today. This extreme stratification and insulation of the privileged is what weighs on my mind, and what should weigh on all concerned religious leaders, on the cusp of President Obama’s decision whether or not to let Gen. MacArthur (oops, sorry—Gen. McChrystal) steamroll hi…
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Granville Oral Roberts, the granddaddy of all Pentecostal healing and prosperity evangelists, died yesterday of complications from a fall in Newport Beach, California. Perhaps no evangelist outside of Billy Graham has played such an integral role in contemporary American religious life in the last century. Roberts’ healing ministry, his seed-faith teachings, the creation of the City of Faith and Oral Roberts University are the highlights of the l…
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…rds from the ruling might someday be recalled as historic: “Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and women.” I think what might become equally memorable is Judge Walker’s very clear statement that the sole source of this moral disapproval is religion and traditional morality. He wrote, “moral and religious views form the only basis for a belief that same-sex couples are different from opposite-sex couples…
Read More…nd of the countless atrocities in the U.S. since that day, all of which have been against Muslims, only, or against persons mistaken to be Muslim, I will hold this as a day of silence. This is also my way of protesting the wave of Islam-bashing that has risen to new heights in the United States of late….
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…oached her booth, her voice breaking up with emotion. Emotion reverberated all along the parade route, as Pride attendees—many of them gay and from Mormon backgrounds—cheered and cried. Some crowd members sang the lyrics to hymns quoted on Mormons Building Bridges placards. Marcher Susan Dortsch walked over to hug a woman at the edge of the parade route. “She had tears rolling down her face,” says Dortsch. “She was sobbing and saying, ‘Thank you s…
Read More…ging about its “eternity” (and so it’s small wonder that the emperor eventually exiled Ovid from Rome to the Black Sea, though there are debates still today about what actually prompted this). According to Livy, the Saturnalia was established very soon after a temple to Saturn was built in Rome (History of Rome 2.21.1). Still more interesting, he claimed that the public feasts later associated with the Saturnalia came quite a bit later (History o…
Read More…the genre, and more importantly, offered constructive suggestions. Zeba Iqbal built on the theme, and talked about the fact that this is reality TV, and is not “gospel.” In other venues, I have written about the fact that this is a great opportunity. That’s what many individuals with a bully pulpit fail to realize, that it is an opportunity. Instead of building up, they focus on tearing down. Wajahat Ali writes about some of the criticism from the…
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