Religion Dispatches
…s Baldwin, whose thought and influence are still very much alive. Although best remembered for his novels and incisive cultural criticism, Baldwin spent several years as a teenage preacher in the historic Black wing of evangelicalism. Eventually deconverted by everything from Dostoevsky to the hypocrisy of other ministers, he would end up balancing distance from any church with affirmation of his essential belief in love, punctuating it all with c…
Read More…men’s exclusive access at designated times. I have a plan, and Allah knows best. I will do whatever the rest of the day might dictate to get as much access within the limited times as I can. I like my shaykh’s advice to seek as much of the nur or light of Muhammad (saw) as I can. My shaykh, and many Sufi teachers talk about Nur-Muhammad. Some go as far as to say the whole universe was created only after Nur-Muhammad. Or that the whole of the unive…
Read More…off last year after my accident.) You know what they say about saving the best for last?! So it is appropriate, I think, that in my reading I came across several discussions about the ummah which gave me additional food for thought. The word ummah comes from the same root as the word for mother, umm, in Arabic. So, with such a root, you should get the picture already. It’s about intimate connections. But it is never used for family nor even for e…
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…now is this: how can we wage this battle even more effectively? How can we best shield ourselves from the inevitable onslaughts of predatory journalists, readers, and politicians who prefer “fake news” over evidence-based, critical discussions on religion and society? How can we more fully reap the rewards of living dangerously? It is not about policing our tone or maintaining respectability. On the contrary, I beg public intellectuals: do not san…
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…es and reproduces a white supremacist perspective, but that’s sure what it looks like from Jones’ data. He’s quite right to point out the long entanglement of the white church with racist social norms, and right that that entanglement has never been fully reckoned with, even in the most progressive denominations. In that sense, his book may serve as a welcome call to repentance to Christians who think their church is doing better on racial issues…
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…share those beliefs. Nor should they shape anyone’s ability to access the best healthcare they need in a given situation, to adopt children, or to marry. This isn’t merely theoretical to me. Although I cannot get pregnant, being queer is enough to deter me from seeking healthcare in a Catholic or Protestant hospital when at all possible, since I can’t trust doctors beholden to Christian dogma to care for me appropriately. Catholic hospitals, whos…
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…For one thing, I’m a Niebuhrian. I find the idea of progress difficult at best. For another, having many friends in the disability community and close relatives who have been immunocompromised and at great risk from the pandemic, yes, I’m pretty sensitive to “the terrible dilemma faced by the disabled.” I don’t think that’s anything to apologize for. More important, N.T.’s argument implies that “fully-abled persons” have a duty to attend church i…
Read More…ngs) is this: libas al-taqwa dhalika al-khayr, “the dress of taqwa that is best” (7:26). We talked about taqwa already, right: God consciousness which results in certain and actions. You cannot have taqwa without the right to exercise choice. You cannot be said to be a conscientious human being without excising agency. You cannot do what is best about dress unless you are doing it by choice. This is NOT just anything goes though, so long as you ch…
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…primarily about describing the world as it is (although it should take our best understanding of the natural world into account), but about depicting the world as it could be, and transforming it into that better vision of reality. And of course, when religion takes a harmful view of the future, it can often contribute to bringing about a minor apocalypse. This episode ended with the Doctor and Amy not having managed to prevent Van Gogh’s suicide,…
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…imes, the stories revealed a connection, a joining together of two ways of looking at the world. Other times the stories were about science explaining our religious notions; still others sought to use religion to deny science. So, in a decidedly unscientific assessment, here are the top religion-meets-science stories from the Year of Darwin: 1. “Junk Science” in Texas Classrooms In April, fundamentalist Christian members of the Texas Board of Educ…
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