Religion Dispatches
…Muslims in the service of the Antichrist; Islamophobic films are obsessively distributed to create even more fear on college campuses; and major bookstore shelves are stocked with poorly-researched books warning about the dangers posed to modernity by Islam. We have more to fear from these fears than from a set of outdated cartoons….
Read More…d that the “natural born citizen” theory figured so prominently in Corsi’s new book. Corsi doesn’t cite Titus, but Titus has been pushing this harebrained business for a few years. He first presented it to an IOTC “First Friday” event last year. In a 2009 story on WND, Titus was interviewed as an expert on the original meaning of the Constitution, where he also made the same arguments. In its announcement of the book release today, WND notes that…
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…en’s rights. And instead of focusing on why parents may resent states and school districts that afford their queer minors safe spaces without explicitly informing the parents, reporters ought to ask why so many queer and especially trans minors feel unsafe coming out to their “liberal” parents. Anyone who’s ever been a teenager who felt like they couldn’t tell their parents something important should be able to muster up the empathy with ease. But…
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…ng to the larger points that I wanted to make in specific chapters and the book itself. College-age sons getting into trouble, tirades against the fads of the time (such as “auto-cars”), lovingly tender letters from gruff husbands to their wives all had to make a point or get cut. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about your topic? There are two groups of people that often have “interesting” ideas about faith commitments and personal ide…
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…riptions of what occurred in parishes. Conservatives cite the mythical nuns-wearing-miniskirts but they neglect to interview Catholics of the “Greatest Generation” who actually lived through the transitions. Something called “the Sixties” gets blamed for all the problems in Catholicism, but the nitty-gritty scholarship has not been done to legitimate pointing fingers. Catholic history still is very much intellectual and institutional history. Cons…
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…there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? I wish I had written Andre Comte-Sponville’s The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality. If more non-believers read that book, we would find it easier to talk with each other and with religious believers. We would also be happier and more fulfilled. What’s your next book? No book soon, that’s for sure. I hope to be able one day to write a serious book challenging the assumptions of capitalism on behalf…
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…? Which one? Why? At the moment, I’m a little jealous of Benjamin Zeller’s new book Heavens Gate: America’s UFO Religion. During the Cold War, UFOs really were an important part of America’s religious imagination. You can see this in some of Lueken’s prophecies that account for UFOs. There have been several good books on UFO religions but I think there is a lot more to explore. I also admire Zeller for humanizing a group that the public has been v…
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…out some of the scorn I originally felt; I reserved the scorn for the self-focus-based distortions of mindfulness. Mindlessness: The Corruption of Mindfulness in a Culture of Narcissism Thomas Joiner Oxford UP August 2017 What are some of the biggest misconceptions about your topic? That true mindfulness mostly emphasizes attunement to the self. The self is trivial as compared to all the rest of the cosmos and true mindfulness is heedful of this;…
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…ly ridiculous, though never nefarious. Introduced with a pitch-perfect rock-and-roll theme, Smith’s love of storytelling permeates the show, and he enthralls his audiences with a “Donny Osmond flair” (perhaps the most aptly appreciative description of the Mormon prophet ever recorded). Tentative at first, Cunningham finds in Smith a model as he begins inventing his own stories, becoming more and more excited and confident as he begins to glory in…
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…ng to the canons of scholarship. What alternative title would you give the book? I am very comfortable with the title and the sub-title that indicates that Jewish Harlem is still a work in progress. How do you feel about the cover? I love it. It is a street scene from the early 1900s of Jewish institutions with Yiddish signage. These institutions are long gone but not forgotten by me. Is there a book out there you wish you had written? Which one?…
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