Religion Dispatches
…I think about that, it makes popular ideas like the Protestant work ethic look different to me. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? One of the ways I found to approach the inner life of Jonathan Edwards is that we were/are both very ambitious. He wrote when he was young that he aspired to be the one true Christian of his age, even if nobody else could completely pull it off. Me, I would love to draw everyone into the world of…
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…misunderstanding of who trans people are and what their health care needs look like. If the point is to cut a “tremendous cost” from the military’s health care expenditures perhaps we should start with those suffering from erectile dysfunction: https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/890247497700057090 (For the record, I believe all members of the military deserve full, unfettered access to whatever kind of health care they and their doctor determi…
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…satirically mocked as an old giant with robes and gray hair and a strange looking, insect-eating rodent, respectively. The smash sensation video game, God of War, is now in its third incarnation, showing once again how human glorification of violence often goes hand-in-hand with religious imagery and symbolism. Sometimes the most intense physical experiences bring God to mind, or are understood as a form of divine embodiment, and cannot be fully…
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…oors and Christians Legitimately, we might ask what a confident West could look like. Caldwell is saddened by the suppression of Moros y Cristianos, Spanish celebrations of the Reconquista. These festivals often employ effigies termed “Muhammads,” whose heads are exploded by fireworks to cheer the historic restoration of Catholicism. The same militant Catholicism which tortured, expelled, and killed tens of thousands of ethnically Spanish Muslims,…
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…ive. Only, because they didn’t look or sound like what they told us bigots looked and sounded like, they often got away with it. So, yes, sometimes Joe Biden talks the talk of a politico on the right side of history. But as anyone who’s ever been bitten, fooled, or just had to grow up knows, it’s always wiser to judge people on what they do, not what they tell you. And if we apply that metric to the Senator from Delaware? Though Israel’s war has k…
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…e-God of the sexist tradition, the problem is clearly not solved. If we’re looking at race and religion as important elements that mass killers have drawn upon for their violent rage, there’s no reason for us to look away from associated cultural constructions of masculinity as a comparably important factor. The sins of our religious fathers Whatever the unique complex of psychosocial, religious, financial, moral, political, or other issues that t…
Read More…nd Francis will likely select new cardinals come February. Why might a new-look synod matter? Because the sections that failed still had majority support [though a 2/3 majority is required for passage]. The paragraph on gay people, for example, failed by just six votes. But the synod fathers who want divorced and remarried Catholics to be able to receive the Eucharist have a longer row to hoe. Those sections failed by larger margins—and they did n…
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…his way: “The Rapture is a time of incredible mercy and grace. If you only look at the people who defy God, it’s a negative time. But if you look at the whole population, it’s a blessed time.” In LaHaye’s “blessed time” I see a continuation of Santorum’s “we birthed a nation from nothing” comment. Both focus their attention on white Christian protagonists following divine inspiration with a few unfortunate—if genocidal—consequences that should rem…
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…ands of years. There’s something powerful in that to me,” he says. “If you look at all the absolute shit it’s been through for thousands of years; whether it’s corrupt popes or immoral priests, it always comes out the other side. I think all that’s faith-affirming for me.” Twenty-year-old Justin Bujalski sits at the next table. In his second year at Fordham he’s decided to convert to Catholicism after falling out of touch with the Lutheran faith o…
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…e and which are false? How should we tell them differently in light of the best empirical data and theories? This new discussion does not entail a different kind of science, though it does call for science without ideology. It does, however, call for a broader view of religion. John Haught puts it brilliantly in his forthcoming book, Making Sense of Evolution: Darwin, God, and the Drama of Life: “If we measure the movement of life in terms of a na…
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