Religion Dispatches
…oll, so too do the alt-right’s young meme brigades shock older generations with outrageous caricatures, from the Jewish “Shlomo Shekelburg” to “Remove Kebab,” an internet in-joke about the Bosnian genocide… Are they actually bigots? No more than death metal devotees in the 80s were actually Satanists. For them, it’s simply a means to fluster their grandparents. In other words: the kids are trolling you, people! Relax! The argument is deeply dising…
Read More
…called “Winning the Abortion Grays,” they suggested that candidates say “I will work to dramatically reduce the number of abortions in America while protecting personal liberties.” The goal was tactical, not principled. It was not about preventing abortion; it was about getting Democrats elected. Around the same time, pro-peace, anti-poverty, social justice Catholics and evangelicals wanted to challenge the religious right and elect progressives….
Read More
…ably the dominant brand of today’s Republican Party. For good reason, a growing number of expert observers have begun sounding the alarm. I suggest it’s time we hit the panic button. The rally featured plenty of repugnant elements—from the relentless attacks on transgender youth consistent with fascist scapegoating, to the steady drumbeat of election fraud claims, to accusations that Dr. Fauci engineered Covid-19 in a Chinese lab to help a demonic…
Read More
…and that during the 2013 march marking the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade flooded Washington with 650,000 protestors—the number organizers are now using to say their march should draw the same kind of media coverage as the Woman’s March—anyone who has ever covered the march knows that that’s Trump-like wishful thinking about crowd size. Most media coverage of the march optimistically reports attendance in the “tens of thousands.” But that often e…
Read More
…bent on destroying “Islam and the Muslims.” Tragically, such theories are widely accepted by otherwise rational people. India and neighboring Pakistan were born in an ethno-religious bloodbath. Hundreds of thousands were killed and millions left homeless in the wake of the division of British India into independent India and Pakistan in 1947. The wounds of partition have never healed. The two countries have fought a series of wars; both have nucl…
Read More…even have the courtesy to check Trayvon’s phone for his mom and dad’s telephone numbers because it’s just a black criminal’s body to them. While Zimmerman the trigger man slept in his bed, the police ordered a drug and alcohol test for Trayvon’s lifeless body. A black body that was representative of evil against the whiteness of George Zimmerman. I hesitated to write about this story, because there are many good stories about Trayvon and his pare…
Read More
…’m going to tell you how God has worked in my life and you can work it out with my story with the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit and how God’s going to walk you through your life. But I’m not going to tell you what God thinks. You have to determine that on your own.” Haggard’s weekly Oval Office phone calls and grip and grin NAE photo ops with former President George W. Bush are now mere vestiges of an old life, prior to what he calls the “crisis….
Read More…e other laws), there’s no doubt that homophobia in Russia is frighteningly widespread. The breakdown with respect to approval or disapproval was as follows: 42% of respondents were definitely for the law, with another 25% leaning that way. Only 5% of respondents were leaning against the law, while a paltry 2% were definitely against it. 26% were undecided. Even more disturbing: respondents aged 25-39 were reportedly one of the strongest demographi…
Read More
…the first Monday evening of my senior year plastering every dorm we could with fliers for the Islamic Center at NYU’s first event of the year. We slipped into the dorms we couldn’t get signed into, and posted hundreds of cheap notices printed on 8.5 x 11 paper. We’d invited a prominent imam to speak and ordered a delicious dinner, convinced that the perpetually elastic undergraduate stomach would be the gateway to the soul. The next morning, the…
Read More
…s the phrase “over-pervy libertinism” as, for her, the dichotomy is spread wide, with ISIS on one end and the antinomian carnival of de Sade’s vacation home at the other. That’s a freedom worth fighting for, she implies, but it is far from free. Inherent in Christianity—in the system of thought, not just its history—are empire and violence, Krieger argues, particularly a mode of subjugation and submission to servitude—and its lacerations—that rena…
Read More