Religion Dispatches
…als, since last week the board voted to delay indefinitely the purchase of new science textbooks that include the changes McLeroy has lobbied for. Because new science textbooks are estimated to cost $350 million, the board opted to bridge the gap between the old and the new science standards with supplemental materials. The board will review and select the materials next spring. Using supplemental materials may be something of a creationist cloak…
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…at that time were supportive in reviews and comments (Ellen Lewin, Esther Newton and others). Other colleagues seemed surprised at my new choice of fieldwork site, but appreciative of my employment of the “old” method of participant observation. I had no direct connection with LGBT communities, but gay friends seemed very pleased with my choice and complimented me for the supportive presentation and the engaging literary style. The editor of Ling…
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…we are going to burn and send you to hell, where you all belong.” Ireland: New group promotes LGBT inclusion in Presbyterian Church The Belfast Telegraph reports on a retired lawyer’s efforts to create a group that would promote inclusion of LGBT people in the Presbyterian Church, an effort “to emulate the success of existing grups such as Changing Ireland and Accepting Sexuality, which have been operating within the Church of Ireland and the Iris…
Read More…1693, a measure that he believed would establish the Church of England in New York City and the surrounding counties. New Yorkers, however, would have none of it, and they successfully frustrated its implementation in favor of religious freedom and diversity. Throughout its history New York has accommodated – and even, more often than not, welcomed – religious diversity. Yes, sometimes such accommodation came only after a struggle, as with the Gr…
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…thing. And there’s nothing new about his saying so. The Exodus was also a new thing, so new that the Pharaoh is quite right to say he does not know the god of Moses, this god who speaks for slaves. The religion Pharaoh did know, the religion of empires, was based on the repetitive patterns of nature and was thus fundamentally conservative. In contrast, the prophetic religion of Isaiah and his contemporaries posits historical change, guided by a l…
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…. A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans Emily Suzanne Clark UNC Press September 2016 __________ Paul Harvey: Your book is about a group in mid-19th-century New Orleans called the Cercle Harmonique. Briefly, can you just explain who they were, and why we should care? Emily Clark: The Cercle Harmonique was a group of Afro-Creoles, primarily men, in 19th-century New Orleans who believed they spoke with t…
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…nes the status quo. That’s why I and so many others are working to build a new reality, a new possibility. It’s not easy; otherwise, it would have happened already. But I do believe it’s possible. I made the point in my review that some of the theological insights you bring to bear are powerful but not really new. Can you describe the theological work you tap into for the benefit of a wide audience? I worked hard to make the same point you make. E…
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…rsity offered then, as it still does, a wide range of spiritual, mystical, New Age and therapeutic teachings and practices. During our stay, guests could experience centering, energy balancing, massage, astrology, breathing, hypnosis, counseling, neo-Reichian bodywork and workshops on laughing and crying, seeking the feminine, primal feelings and family dynamics. Classes were an hour but courses could take weeks or months. Prices were consistent w…
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…lity.” What are called conspiracy theories by outside observers operate in new age spirituality as a form of theodicy for why their predicted new age of peace, light, and love has yet to emerge. There’s a long history of right-wing esotericism informing the “secret teachings” that DePape espoused, drawing together UFOs, Atlantis, and antisemitism. The Manichaean understanding of world politics and history as determined by a battle between the forc…
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…0s that would become the primary sources of American unreality were hippie New Age hostility to science and reason, and the new academic fashion of postmodern relativism. The former was tolerant of all kinds of outlandish ideas, often non-Western imported religious fragments, and challenged the presumptions of conventional psychiatry and medicine; this emergent counterculture was a “new generation of longhaired hyperindividualists who insist on tr…
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