Religion Dispatches
…he tried to evoke their cooperation and was happy when he got it, but he knew that he wasn’t likely to without a long, arduous program of satyagraha. Gandhi abhorred the idea of cooperating with injustice of any kind; he would rather have died. So he dedicated his life to the belief that lasting solutions to humanity’s problems come from non-cooperation with injustice. And he called us to actively obstruct the workings of unjust systems—to clog t…
Read More…is hosting his annual Interfaith Breakfast on Friday, December 30, and the New York Times is reporting that Muslim leaders will be boycotting the event. I do know that the request for a boycott was initiated by Muslim leaders, but was sent to leaders from several faith communities. I was invited to the breakfast and to participate in the boycott. Based on what we know, I find the spying program deplorable and the interfaith boycott important, but…
Read More…w, the way forward for the Obama Administration is politically murky, said New York magazine writer Chris Rovzar in a September 10 analysis. “If the Justice Department simply doesn’t appeal the case after this ruling, ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ might just go away. If Obama waits for Congress to address the issue, a Republican-led house might reject an overturn,” wrote Rovzar. For Knox, the way forward is clear, and the faith communities he represents…
Read More…sly. Or, apparently, rouse religious leaders to name what is really going on beneath the froth of Washington reporting. And by the way, the New York Times editorial board sees it this way, too….
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…, or difficult to confirm (in the case of deities). When it comes to these new tools, the question is not should we form relationships that involve a substantial amount of projection and anthropomorphizing? Instead, we have to ask ourselves, how are these new relationships unique? Does it matter if a robot is embodied (like hitchBOT) or disembodied (like Xiaoice)? Does it matter if it’s the product of a fun, communal experiment (hitchBOT) or a mul…
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…always thought of the paper, for short, anyway, much like people call The New York Times just “The Times.” But then I started to think about it, and I realized that for me, the word “Jewish” has started to come with unspoken assumptions; who is “Jewish” enough becomes aligned with who is “pro-Israel” enough. The Forward reports on Israel, of course, but it seems to manage to do so in a way that commands respect. And that is no easy maneuver in th…
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…es. First, Linda Sarsour, the director of the Arab American Association of New York, discussed the NYPD: Beckerman and Sarsour then discussed Adelson, and his impact on Gingrich, including the latter’s assertion that the Palestinians are an “invented people:” CLARIFICATION: This post originally said that Adelson funded the Clarion Fund; this was based on a Times piece from earlier this week which reported that the Clarion Fund’s Obsession project…
Read MoreIt’s not exactly new news—but the New York Times has an eye-popping update on abusive labor practices at a Postville, Iowa meatpacking plant. In case you missed it—in May, federal immigration officials raided the nation’s largest kosher plant, Agriprocessors, Inc. in Postville, which had employed almost 400 illegal immigrants, almost two dozen of whom were also under-age. The Times’ Sunday story offers recently uncovered details about…
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…is commentary on the Occupy movement for The Nation, Harper’s, and The New York Times. He has also written about the largesse of the Templeton Foundation and profiled the anthropologist Gabriella Coleman for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Schneider’s “The Biblical Circus of William Stringfellow,” the first of many contributions to RD, appeared just four weeks after RD’s launch in early 2008. His new book, God In Proof, is the story of “the se…
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…is day. Nazi influence in the US culminated with a huge march and rally in New York City in 1939. Thousands gathered in Madison Square Garden to listen to blatantly fascist speeches under the banners of George Washington adorned with swastikas. In 1940, FDR gave a fresh directive to hunt down Nazis. The FBI built a secret spy headquarters inside the 30 Rock building to spy on Nazi activities worldwide, but especially in South America where they co…
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