Religion Dispatches
…ster rolled around and I could at long last register in an Arabic language class. Still, it was the miracle of the text that drove me. Every word I learned, every grammatical construct, I had already come upon in the Qur’an—although by using the phonetics alone. About the only thing that slowed down this rabid pace was becoming a mother. So I had two children (including one born in Libya, where the knots in my ear and my tongue were loosened) befo…
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…d and Samuel Perry have shown: “[…] Christian nationalism influences white Americans’ defense of racial boundaries, and in this case their discomfort with interracial marriage, above and beyond the effects of political conservatism and religious exclusivity separately.” Yale sociology professor Philip Gorski has shown the roots of white Christian nationalism in American history going back to the Puritans, while emphasizing the role that narratives…
Read More…plays a very large role in affirming that LGBT people are no longer second-class citizens in our own country. I know that you have enjoyed the support of many people and you feel that your cause is just. But let’s be clear: you are no Rosa Parks; you are not the brave protesters who risked their lives to sit at an all-white lunch counter or tried to register to vote. You are George Wallace blocking the schoolhouse door. You are the bus driver who…
Read More…ranchised—those less privileged due to cultural and societal views of sex, class, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, education, poverty, age, etc.—through the implementation and support of policies that will better the over all quality of life and allow for human flourishing, recent history tells us that the “religious,” in many cases, will do the opposite. In fact, if we are not careful, those of us who happen to be marked by the afore…
Read More…ergy, and—you guessed it—human sexuality. After review, the films are then classified into the following categories: A-I—general patronage, A-II—adults and adolescents, A-III—adults, L—limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling, and O—morally offensive. Here is a sampling of movies in a few of the categories: A-I: The USCCB Office of Film and Broadcasting denotes that this category is rare as “nowadays…
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…longings are projected onto the Negro.” Baldwin tells the hard truth that American white people cannot know and love themselves, cannot forgive themselves in the Christian sense of forgiveness, unless and until they know and love the American black people with whom their own identity is so closely interwoven. There is little doubt that the killer was projecting his private fears and longings when he shouted to the people in that Emanuel sanctuar…
Read More…as ambassador to the United Nations, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, said American values “do not allow for discrimination of any kind to anyone.” But Trump’s transition team sent the U.S. State Department a questionnaire asking if PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Pan for AIDS Relief, had become “a massive, international entitlement program.” This week, on January 24 and 25, the new UN Independent Expert charged with investigating violence and d…
Read More…ut McDonnell’s use of sources would be inadequate even in an undergraduate class. For example, he cites statistical evidence as the basis for his arguments, but checking his references we find that his source is not a scholarly report but an un-footnoted reference by a Christian Reconstructionist pastor, Ray Sutton, in a little book written for Gary North’s “Biblical Blueprint” series. The book is written at a level appropriate for a church Bible…
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…optimal level is one that would afford a lifestyle similar to what middle class Americans have now for everybody on earth. At that point, we could live as flagrantly, as profligately, as we might wish—not that I’d recommend that, but we could—because there’d be so relatively few of us compared to the number we have now. I’m trying to imagine what it would be like to be born on that planet: 200 years in the future. Only 100 million people. Well, I…
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…tics charge the Times with the crime of offering readers “a new version of American history in which slavery and white supremacy become the dominant organizing themes.” Quelle horreur. This fight is about much more than who owns our history and who gets to write it. It’s about a perceived threat to a civil religion that requires a white-washed history in which white Americans make “mistakes” but in which good always prevails. It’s about a certain…
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