Religion Dispatches
…cal political power—which are quite sizeable—appear, readers and viewers disappear. It’s just not a sexy story. Why that should be we can leave for another day. Here it’s enough to note this interesting cultural fallout from “Super Tuesday.”…
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…tely, over the years about our shared Christian faith. From their earliest days as a band, U2 has sung about wrestling with angels, the magnificent and mystical, God the Father, the Divine Feminine (who moves in mysterious ways). They’ve confessed their sins, aired their doubts, celebrated amazing grace, and mourned their losses. The band (and its effervescent lead singer, Bono, in particular) often wears its spiritual predilections on its sleeve…
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…his underground of “antis” so frequently emerges. I’ve had numerous Latter-Day-Saint Ph.D. students, know some leaders, have spoken at some of their scholarly gatherings, have learned and taught much about their history, and can’t find anyone who can find something that would rule out a Mormon from being Chief Executive. (Curiously, the issue did not even come up, as far as I can remember, when Mitt Romney’s father ran for president in a generatio…
Read More…mate not only by advocating that they speak freely and boldly on the first day but also by arriving early each day, greeting participants when they arrive, and mingling with people at the coffee breaks. It is well known that in past synods a discreet but effective censorship was exercised by Vatican officials, but what was even more serious and damaging to the realization of an open and honest debate was the “self-censorship” exercised by the bish…
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…and use those sophisticated guns. In the rush from origins to the present day, let’s not skip over the Civil War, when the most sophisticated guns of the day freed the slave. At least that’s the popular version of our history, the traditional complement to Emerson’s popular version of the Revolution. Just Show Up and Shoot So the gun is at the center of the story of America as it’s so commonly told: a people always loving freedom, always under a…
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…outcomes. The world of scales and practicing—hours and hours and hours per day, playing in wedding bands, giving lessons, doing all of these kinds of debasing things in order to make the rent—[produces] preparedness to enter the space and time of invention. And when that happens, whether we’re talking solo performance or performance with other people, it’s at that moment that interactivity is required for the musicians, in order to invoke the spir…
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…ontractors enough to pay a living wage. In fact, Nike workers earn $3.50 a day in Indonesia. That’s not enough to purchase a gallon of milk there! It barely buys a Big Mac! Today no one can claim ignorance. Workers have journeyed to the U.S. to give gut-wrenching accounts of their travails. Journalists and watchdog groups have exhaustively exposed the injustices workers making Nike products endure. Read, for example, this recent article based on i…
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…art of enforcement efforts by the police before Ramadan, the monthlong holiday in which observant Muslims fast throughout the day. Tobias Basuki, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, said the police appeared to be formally taking on a role that had previously been held by hard-line Islamist groups. “The government is trying to co-opt the religious narrative,” he said. The Indonesian government, under the lea…
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…ut already has a thick goatee. When I tell him I’m a Jew he takes out his iPhone and wants to play me a song. Hebrew lettering appears on the bottom of the screen and a yarmulke-clad singer stands on a stage, microphone in hand. When he begins singing, in Arabic, Ahmed knows every word. He sings about chewing qat, about falling in love. “Most of the Jews here went to Israel, but they stayed Yemeni—listen to his accent! He’s a perfect Sana’ani. He…
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…upon the earth, but people don’t see it.” We live inside the miracle every day. All we have to do is open our eyes and see it. Karen Armstrong writes in The Battle for God: “All the world religions insist that no spirituality is valid unless it results in practical compassion.” True spirituality is measured in action, not beliefs. We witness this in the deeds of Gandhi, Rosa Parks, or Aung San Sui Kyi in Burma. “To behave like a merely decent huma…
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