Religion Dispatches
…at some level, enough to “know” when people walk away, you’re at your gravesite and enough to experience a glimpse of your permanent place of abode. That is, if you’ve led a good life, done the rights things, tried you best, etc., you’ll get heaven. If not, well; you know what happens then. Now stories about Nakir and Munkar get interesting. So much so that some will even tell you the “questions” that they will ask and what answers are correct! I…
Read More
…ologist for the TED Talk set. And his new book, Focus, is a New York Times bestseller. But before any of that fame, Goleman was a hardcore Buddhist meditator—and remains one today. His early books were about the development of the contemplative path, and throughout his work has run the theme of how meditative practice, in secular or spiritual contexts, can lead to greater happiness and peace—and conversely, how the disconnects in our own minds can…
Read More
…ed for a measure to give women free IUDs. Perriello, on the other hand, is best know as the co-founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, which came to attention in the WikiLeaks dump of John Podesta’s emails as the organization Podesta backed to foment a “Catholic Spring.” Catholics in Alliance was formed in the wake of the last Catholic panic, after John Kerry lost the Catholic vote to George W. Bush by five points. Officially, the id…
Read More
…its downfall. Scientific inquiry has to divorce itself from what makes the best story, and science writers, myself included, are in the business of making science compelling by telling stories. It’s true: we report scientific findings in a narrative form. One important point: science is filled with conditionals and religious literature is not. Any religious literature, any revealed scripture, doesn’t have lots of mights and coulds and maybes and f…
Read More
…g down from a high, and literally fell to the floor. “God, I have tried my best to ignore you and to do things my way,” he remembers praying. “I’m broken. I’m broken and in need of fixing.” A classic prodigal son story followed. Tchividjian recommitted himself to Christ, entered the seminary, became a minister. He married and had three children. He started the New City Presbyterian Church, a 450-member church in Coconut Creek. Tchividjian’s “class…
Read More
…received criticism for the book on the grounds that it violates consent at best and allows for a kind of truth of the Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism at worst. Author and blogger Sarah Wendell wrote a letter to the board of directors of Romance Writers of America (RWA) decrying the nomination of the book for RITA Awards in two categories. Wendell, who is Jewish, worries that celebrating such a horrific work creates an environment where writers…
Read More
…cularism: the religion of liberty, equality, and fraternity. These are the best of those French values, attacked this weekend. To paraphrase an American poet, there is nothing wrong with France that what’s right with France can’t fix. There is no figure that better embodies the French character than Montaigne, the writer who in many ways invented the modern person. A Catholic, he was horrified by the terror enacted in the Paris massacres. For him…
Read More
…ly rejected the claim that allowing trans folks to use the facilities that best match their gender identity leads to any increase in reports of harassment or assault in such spaces. It just doesn’t work that way. In fact, if anyone has anything to fear it should be transgender people since they’re actually more likely than their cisgender peers to be harassed and assaulted in sex-segregated spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms. And with high-pro…
Read More…off last year after my accident.) You know what they say about saving the best for last?! So it is appropriate, I think, that in my reading I came across several discussions about the ummah which gave me additional food for thought. The word ummah comes from the same root as the word for mother, umm, in Arabic. So, with such a root, you should get the picture already. It’s about intimate connections. But it is never used for family nor even for e…
Read More
…share those beliefs. Nor should they shape anyone’s ability to access the best healthcare they need in a given situation, to adopt children, or to marry. This isn’t merely theoretical to me. Although I cannot get pregnant, being queer is enough to deter me from seeking healthcare in a Catholic or Protestant hospital when at all possible, since I can’t trust doctors beholden to Christian dogma to care for me appropriately. Catholic hospitals, whos…
Read More