Religion Dispatches
…tribal terms. Most tribes, whether of nations or ethnicities or sports fandom, can easily demarcate their membership—it’s the people who look like us, or talk like us, or dress like us. Tribes organized around religious belief have rituals, sacred texts, and physical spaces that all serve to bind the participants together. Atheism has none of these things—most of the time it’s an individual choice, made and kept alone. In my piece, I point out ho…
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…umerous occasions they vehemently have disagreed with the notion that they represent a new religious movement, and they are quite critical of those who view them as religious leaders. However, despite their unequivocal rejection of the religious moniker, the band members all have spoken in great detail about the spiritual foundations of the Grateful Dead universe. Reflecting upon the music and message of the 1960s, Garcia said, “For me, the lame p…
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…t. This is about: are your theologies and ethics aligned with the logic of dominance and white supremacy, or are your theologies and ethics aligned with those who are most affected by those systems? And if it is not the latter, then you are capitulating to a logic of dominance, of white supremacy. Thank you for being there. Is there anything else you’d like to add? If I can just [reiterate] my plea to white clergy. As a trans queer Latinx and publ…
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Recently, President Bush was assaulted by an Iraqi reporter with a shoe. I think in order to understand the true import of an assault by a shoe, one needs to truly appreciate the insulting nature of the shoe, not only in Arab culture, but in Muslim cultures more generally. The shoe as tool of discipline is quite a common trope in Islamicate literatures. Salman Rushdie has used the idea of children being disciplined by champal (flip-flops) to grea…
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…his landmark A Study of History describes an “abortive Far Western Christendom of the ‘Celtic Fringe,’” it’s more accurate to speak of an alternate Christianity, an idea more myth than reality. Today, the idealization of Celtic Christianity endures in any number of manifestations, from a community like Iona to the shelves of New Age bookstores. Bradley argues that although the idea of a historical Celtic Church may be an exercise in “wishful think…
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…Their Side (New Press, 2004), Esther Kaplan estimated that in 2002 the NCR dominated the Republican organizations of eighteen states and controlled at least a quarter of Republican committees in forty-four states. True, this does not eliminate a tug-of-war among the NCR, neoconservatives, and old-time Wall Street Republicans. However, the image of Robertson as president is a good way to focus our attention on how non-Robertsonite Republicans are i…
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