Religion Dispatches
…aid off in order to go. People get confused by this, because one of the pre-conditions is that one must be debt-free. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an amount due against my credit card (or my mortgage, if I still had one), but it means I have keep my payments up in accordance to my agreements. No overdue amounts. I’ve done my mock packing. What is mock packing, you ask? Well, for this trip I have almost all new clothes, and I need to make sure th…
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…social justice issues for left-leaning Catholics and sexual restraint, law-and-order, and a muscular national defense for right-leaning Catholics. And, as Jack Jenkins notes at Think Progress: …if this sort of dissenting spirit was unique among modern American Catholics, one could plausibly argue that the United States has created an environment that bifurcates Catholics in unusual ways. But it’s not: In 2014, a global survey conducted by Univisi…
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…someone out there. So every time I read about the discovery of a new Earth-like planet or read about NASA’s upcoming Kepler planet-finding mission or watch a movie like Contact, I grow excited over—and, like Brahe, even a little afraid of—the vast unknown. My mind boggles. What’s really out there?, I wonder. Yet I cannot help but detect a kind of desperation in our quest for extraterrestrial intelligence. I can’t point to any single source of thi…
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…“To describe the feast as fundamentally unchristian is therefore either ill-informed or disingenuous.” The evangelical association of Halloween with contemporary Paganism and Western esotericism and witchcraft gives further pause. Evangelical ministries will frequently address witchcraft during the month of October through radio programs, websites, blogs, and newsletters. Unfortunately, the portrait they paint tends to rehearse various mischaracte…
Read More…eater access to America for a select Brown Muslim population. Still African-American Muslims outnumber them, and face double invisibility and erasure: from within and from without. So, if you ever wonder why I don’t comment on some of the “top” stories in the news about Islam in America, I intentionally try not to respond to sensationalism. I don’t comment about a story if the story already gets enough media attention and if the story does not hel…
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…white lines that are drawn between conceptions of good and evil make it all-too-easy to apply these dualisms to groups of people. When theologies leave no room for ambiguity, mystery and uncertainty, it becomes very easy to identify an “us” (good, heterosexual) versus a “them” (evil, gay). Additionally, hierarchical conceptions of value and worth are implicit in many of our theological notions. Needless to say, value and worth are not distributed…
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…American shores, but Luce framed his Catholic cover subjects within a week-to-week serial of significant individuals of whom lesser mortals should take note. When one of his cover-cardinals, Eugenio Pacelli, eventually became Pope Pius XII, Time could claim status not merely as Catholic observer, but Catholic kingmaker as well. Readers hoping to gain insight into what it actually might mean to live as an American Catholic who was not a member of…
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…ve days a week, with little scripting. Tammy once did an episode on a merry-go-round. One cast member threw up in the dog costume he was wearing as they spun round and round, all on live television. At the time it all seemed fresh and, for many, exciting. The sex and financial shenanigans were only interesting because of the size of PTL’s cultural footprint. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? I have written dense academic works…
Read More…in a messy both/and reality. (I am assuming not all these people are right-wingers.) I don’t want more top-down coverage about the end of religion. I’d like more bottom-up stories about what kinds of religion, or irreligion, get people through their day—along with analyses of religion’s ever-evolving role in politics, culture and society. As for branding, “Post-Religion Dispatches from a More or Less Still Religious World” seems like a lot to say…
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…lectively interested in keeping at bay, adding fuel to their fire seems ill-advised. Also, not to steal Chrissy Stroop’s gig, but it’s really not okay to make other people your non-consensual missionary project. And it’s nonsensical to try to convert a person—or a country—that’s already converted. Unless you don’t think they really are converted; and as we’ve already discussed, in light of the history of East-West Christian relations it’s easy to…
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