Religion Dispatches
…tle to do with the worship of a marginalized Jew, named Jesus, who came to free the poor and oppressed. This counterfeit Christian community worships power, desires control, and imagines the world revolving around self-sufficient men (and a few women). I call it “Mad Man Religion.” Mad Man Religion looks just like Christianity. It connects religious practices to free market practices like you would connect pieces from a Lego set. And it offers to…
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…s our enemies, and the latter constructs a false sense of independence and freedom.” I don’t know if we Americans, especially Christians in America, want to be freed from our demons. The late New Testament scholar Walter Wink defined the demonic as an array of human and supra-human forces aligned to destroy life. The demonic was both individual and structural, personal and collective, sentient and mechanical. Wink’s expansive way of writing about…
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…ng any distinctive rights or obligations: bye-bye to the establishment and free-exercise clauses of the Constitution, etc. They might as well protect us from the “establishment” of widget and the “free exercise” thereof. Both are meaningless, since neither “widget” nor “religion” point to anything specific. Linker, on the other hand, takes the exact opposite tack: he legislates the meaning of “religion” as those particular referents marked by the…
Read More…arket economics. One of the best examples is the Rev. Robert Sirico of the free market Acton Institute, who released a video attempting to defend his views against Evangelii Gaudium. Best “who, me?” line: “Who is advocating a market without regulations, without law?” On the Eternal Word Television Network program The World Over last week, Bishop Robert Morlino, the bishop of Madison, Wisconsin, discussed a portion of Evangelii Gaudium in which the…
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…he Palestinians get no part of Jerusalem, no hint of a right of return, no freeze on settlements, and a vaguely defined state at some future date, but with no army, no control of their air space, no right to sign treaties unless Israel approves, and (it would seem) other unspecified limitations to be dictated by Israel as negotiations proceed. Of course Netanyahu knows full well that Israel can show its vaunted strength only as long as the United…
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…lsewhere. What makes that idea different in the The Aquarian Gospel is the free and almost casual borrowing from every religious tradition known to Levi Dowling, the frank sense that all religions aim at the same essential truths and that what the Veda said first, Jesus said conclusively. The inhabitants of the Age of Aquarius just so happen to be especially ready for the revelation. There is a surprising degree of self-congratulation and a brash…
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…n’s dying, like all deaths, as the shedding of a worn-out jacket. The soul freed of its tattered covering moves on to another life. That is somewhat but not entirely consistent with the Catholic teaching on death. As I mourn the death of this extraordinary man, whom I see in the famous photo smiling and more free than most, maybe, in handcuffs, smiling. I think of the Christ and the body. I think of how expert and deliberate Berrigan was in using…
Read More…utional requirement of neutrality; such a forum need not become a religion-free zone.” Rep. Taylor’s response to last week’s prayer shows why inclusion is not a simple solution. When minority religions give opening prayers, there have been retaliations from the majority in the form of political protests and—in some cases—vandalism and death threats. So the promise of rotating in prayers by minority faiths is less viable in practice than on paper….
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Along with freedom of religion, freedom of the press stands as one of the five fundamental freedoms in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. But what is the free press, as an institution, supposed to do? Theorists of democracy generally put forth the free press as a cornerstone of civil society. Media outlets inform readers on matters of public interest, sometimes exposing malfeasance and corruption in business or government. They also prov…
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…thout that context, is motivated by the same essence for me: Allah made me free and equal and anyone who dares to limit that freedom or curtail my equality has no right to do so. They also have no control over my choice to live that equality and justice, save for oppression. The Qur’an is pretty emphatic about that: oppression is human-made and must be human-eradicated. I reject anything and anyone who interferes with my choice and my right to liv…
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