Religion Dispatches
…side a Hindu home adjoining a temple in the Bronx. While in West Sayville, New York an Indian Christian parade draws interest from the surrounding community. The St. Mary Malankara Indian Orthodox Church’s Assumption Day Parade is an annual favorite for the neighborhood. Keith Olberman found the Aqua Buddha. How did Fox News let him scoop them on that? It seems the happiest countries in the world are also the least religious. In Illinois, one athe…
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…rvative talking head Ann Coulter will headline its “Homocon 2010” event in New York next month. “The gay left has done their best to take all the fun out of politics, with their endless list of boycotts and protests. Homocon is going to be our annual effort to counter the ‘no-fun police’ on the left,” said Christopher Barron, Chairman of the Board of GOProud. “I can’t think of any conservative more fun to headline our inaugural party then the self…
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…he South, and when it came time for a college search, she cast her eyes to New York University, graduating in 2005 with her BFA. She is now studying for a master’s degree at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Button doesn’t flinch when approaching difficult subject matter. From the Jim Crow South to the Rape of Tamar in the Bible, Button’s work presents a complex and fresh artistic vision. Her Hymnbook Project features pages from…
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…rtist ministry says, “that just wouldn’t fly in a post-Christian city like New York.” At Pete’s Candy Store, the bar where Revolution holds its Sunday evening services, Bakker tries to build not just a solid community—through a deep commitment to fighting social injustices, for example—but an egalitarian one as well. He doesn’t want to command all of the attention, and he doesn’t want to be the hand-shaking, holier-than-thou pastor seen at many ev…
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…that the proposed mosque and community center, which is modeled after the New York YMCA and Jewish Community Center, is a continuation of century-old efforts at community building and an attempt to represent Islam in lower Manhattan as American Muslims have understood and experienced it rather than through the actions of terrorists. The decision to allow the building of the mosques and community center is yet another episode in American history t…
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…ing that the Met receives “millions in taxpayer funds,” Justin Joseph, the New York City resident who filed the federal lawsuit, argues that this makes it “government speech” and that the government should not support speech that is racist. Annie Armstrong, writing for the Creators Project posits: Joseph’s case raises the question of whether museums ought to edit their displays to evolve with the sentiments of contemporary audiences…[This] case ur…
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…l a distinct kind of expertise and certainty. Other outlets, including the New York Times and Daily Kos, have launched similar forecasts. What’s the appeal of quantifying the future? What should we make of these technological oracles? RD associate editor Michael Schulson and Alan Levinovitz, an RD contributor and a professor of Chinese philosophy and religion at James Madison University, got together online to chat about fate, uncanniness, and pro…
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…o, Howard Johnson, a priest at the cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, visited the nascent Anglican Church in Nigeria. He was distressed at the the unnecessary “Britishness” of the Church—“are cutaway coats and Gothic slits of the essence of Christianity?” he asked—and the Church’s inability to keep pace with the growth of Islam. “Unless we change our tactics and treble our efforts, Christianity may be doomed to play a diminishing r…
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…ully admonished by respected elders of the very liberal church I served in New York that it was confusing and potentially hurtful to our visitors to include old gospel hymns expressing washed-in-the-blood theology during regular worship services (as I was wont to do). If hymns like that were going to show up in our services, there needed to be a clear explanation that no one there still actually clung to such barbarously bad theology. In view of t…
Read More…he Muslim-American community as “bad.” This theme persisted in bus ads in New York that purport to reveal the truth about Islam and another op-ed against Park51. In the op-ed, Qasim Rashid (no relation) argues that Muhammad said, “Muslims must never practice his faith in a manner that offends his non-Muslim neighbors.” The way he paraphrases the hadith implies that if anyone objects to anything a Muslim does, they should not do it. In other words…
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