Religion Dispatches
…ing it’s not the physical body that is raised, he goes on to speak about a spiritual body. And as he tries to explain what a spiritual body is, he uses images of continuity that are at the same time image of radical discontinuity. So, the physical body is like a seed. The spiritual body is like a full-grown plant. Obviously, there is continuity, but the difference in appearance is enormous between a tree and an acorn. He does say there is continui…
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…having had the chance to turn my dissertation on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit into a book and to make my definitive statement on the Hegel-Marx relationship. My scholarly interests simply changed along the way. What’s your next book? I have been interested in the constitutional claims of the Tea Party movement, whose supporters always express reverence for the Constitution and who claim to be “constitutional conservatives.” My early exploratio…
Read More…hat most sickens: the absence of a community of active and intelligent and spirit-filled resistance, the sense that everyone is making sure their bed corners are properly turned down, the faint sound of heels clicking. Given gruesome past instances of prying, spying, and coercion of the conscience by state actors over centuries, one might imagine that American religious leadership would be up in arms at this moment. Our bloody history makes clear…
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…bodies of men, and more recently women too. But even with increases in the numbers of women in the military and changes in recent policies about gays serving our country, the institution itself is deeply rooted in a masculine, heterosexist institutional culture that values physical strength, glorifies the violence of warfare, and demands the simultaneous obedience of soldiers to commanders and the suppression of individual identity in the service…
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…exity arises from the overlay of Ignation spirituality that forms Francis’ spirit and psyche. It’s a language and symbol set all its own—heavy with “discernment” and reliant on prayer as a means of knowing. The interviewer tries to interpret it at times (who knew that Peter Faber [1506-46] was such an influential fellow?), but what stands out is how Francis is imbued with the customs and governance style of the Society of Jesus. The notion of a “…
Read More…o great lengths LGBT people have had to take to be able to worship both in spirit and in truth. The MCC, founded just a few short years before this tragedy, in 1968, by Rev. Troy Perry, has survived many acts of violence in its history, including a fire of “suspicious origin” that destroyed its Los Angeles headquarters in 1973. The denomination began for the simple reason that LGBT people were not welcome in mainstream congregations—not openly, an…
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…] contained references to ‘Jesus Christ,’ ‘Jesus,’ ‘Your Son’ or the ‘Holy Spirit,’” concluded that it amounted to an “endorsement” of Christianity. Following this ruling, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a leading religious right legal organization, appealed to SCOTUS arguing that pastors should have the freedom to offer prayers in accordance with their religious tradition when speaking on behalf of the government. Upon initial glance, it s…
Read More…rsity, and instead casting his life and presidential aspirations in deeply spiritual terms. Perry said he spent many nights in his 20s pondering his purpose, “wondering what to do with this one life among the billions that were on the planet,” but that God’s answers were revealed to him in due time. No surprise on either count. Liberty University, after all, was founded as a Christian alternative to secular “elite” universities, and speaking at th…
Read More…ulevitz writes, “than of choosing your friends wisely.” In that diplomatic spirit, there’s a whole movement of thinkers devoted to environmental theology, and other reconciliations between environmentalist ideas and scriptural messages. Frankly, that effort seems too intellectual to appeal to most religious practitioners, but too broad in its interpretation and too predetermined in its hermeneutic goals for many intellectuals (although I’d be deli…
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…on. Since the 1970s, Americans have witnessed the increasingly retributive spirit of this country’s prisons. It was imperative to show that while there have always been debates about reformation and retribution, the current environment is an historical anomaly. For people who had any knowledge of prison history, I wanted to deal with some false notions about Quakers and Calvinists. Some scholars have posited accounts of the early prisons in which…
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