Religion Dispatches
…per” (as a doctor early in the pandemic reported in his article entitled “When Fear Conquers: A Doctor Learns About AIDS from Leprosy”). And, on the other hand, well, Pope Benedict XVI. On the one hand, an official saint of lepers and Hawaii. On the other hand, an unofficial saint of HIV/AIDS. Canonization as metaphor? As hope? As disfigurement? As cover-up? What would Father Damien think?…
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…t, within a few years, nascent Christianity was on its way to becoming the official cult of the empire. It is common to think of religion as a primitive form of science, one that asks virtually the same questions and plays a commensurate role in the life of societies. To be sure, there is a vast religious prehistory to be written that would carry The Cosmic Way of Warfare farther back than Newton. But Newton—an alchemist obsessed with decoding pro…
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…of a scientific way of knowing. Again, Coyne’s implication and really the official scientific position of many is that, therefore, spiritual experiences are at best not worth as much as scientific experiences and, at worst, not worth anything. There’s the counter-claim to those who say, “Science itself is a religion, so how can scientists badmouth religion?” Coyne argues, as many have before him, that science is not a religion. What counts as evi…
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…very embarrassing and persistent problem has arisen in some of the sacred sites in Jerusalem where Christians and Jews cross each other’s paths. Teenagers from a small sector of the city’s many Ultra-Orthodox (“Haredi”) Ashkenazi Jewish communities have taken to spitting at clerics wearing prominent crosses and dressed in traditional garb. Assaults have been recorded at the Jaffa and Damascus Gates of the walled Old City, an area with many histor…
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…. Moreover, the way the Nation evolves from here will influence of a great number of people—believers and nonbelievers alike. As Walters points out, the uncomfortable intersection of the Nation and the Office of the President dates back to Malcolm X’s remarks in the wake of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Malcolm X described the assassination as a case of the “chickens coming home to roost”; meaning that the violence the Kennedy administr…
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…of Representatives who voted unsuccessfully to exclude from the chamber’s official record a prayer that had been delivered by an openly gay pastor from Oklahoma City’s Cathedral of Hope. That maneuver brings to mind a moment from the documentary “Eyes on the Prize” when a young black civil rights activist asks a white police officer to pray with him. “I don’t think your prayers get above your head,” the officer replies. Christian conservatives re…
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…lly a party to begin with? Important symbolic convergences suggest the opposite. Love and violence were always joined. This may help to explain the logic of this fascinating pagan-Christian juxtaposition of February 14. Pagans and Christians need not always be at war. Several of their images overlap in significant and interesting ways. Think of Mary the Mother of Sorrows, with her desperate look and bleeding heart. Is she grieving over the martyrd…
Read More…[Editor’s Note: After this post went up I received an email from Focus on the Family’s newsletter, Citizenlink, telling the story of a woman whose former wife is seeking custody of their daughter, Isabella. Citizenlink…
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…gate, and you have to do exactly as they say.” Steve Scheffler, president of the Iowa Christian Alliance, was chosen to head Iowa’s forty-member delegation to the Republican National Convention. Grassley, the state’s senior Republican official, was denied a seat in the delegation. Apparently, the leaders of the Religious Right in Iowa are not only determined and militant. They can be churlish and petulant as well, even to an erstwhile ally. The se…
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…t to the department a long time ago—but it still seems daunting to make it official. What do you think? MH: You’ve taken quite a few Religious Studies courses, and you’ve watched me teach for years, so you have some idea what you’re getting yourself into. How do you see the pros and cons? LH: Yeah, I’ve taken five classes. My favorites were “Gender in US Religion,” “Religion and Immigration,” and “The Bible and Human Rights.” I love the field and…
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