Religion Dispatches
…nd where sensationalism can at times prevail, we are called to attentive discernment.” This is advice well heeded by anyone, regardless of faith. Perhaps, though, the only way for this Pope to silence those “divisive voices” is to give up, and go find a quiet place with no screens. Popes are, after all, human beings too, and everyone deserves to spend their final years without passwords or keyboards if they so desire. In a hopeful gesture about so…
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…he Untouchables), which came out almost a year ago and sold twenty million tickets in France (and nearly as many abroad). Intouchables is a funny and moving comedy, but as politically correct a story as you’ll find: a black young man bordering on delinquency is hired by a tetraplegic wealthy man to be his assistant-nurse-chauffeur. They have a ball together doing crazy—and sometimes nasty—things, and save each other from an apparently inexorable f…
Read More…Back from my Bloggingheads hiatus, I talk with Get Religion’s Mollie Hemingway about whether Mitt Romney’s plan to discuss his Mormonism tonight at the Republican National Convention benefit his candidacy: And we also discussed the significance of the fact that Barack Obama is the only Protestant on both presidential tickets: …
Read More…ways on the north side of Temple Square, cheerfully singing hymns from the screens of their iPhones or from green-backed hymnals, while a clutch of protestors—evangelical Christians, mostly, the same familiar, ragged gang materializing every conference—takes its place behind barricades on a small patch of grass. A stranger, upon learning that I don’t have one of the highly-coveted tickets to the Sunday Conference sessions, spontaneously offers me…
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…ws his tense encounters trying to change fellow white evangelicals’ minds. Schenck discovers that even members of his own staff have concealed carry permits; one staffer tells him he’s owned a gun since he was five years old. During a meeting of the Evangelical Church Alliance, which Schenck chairs, one member says guns are “in our DNA.” Another offers, “if we take guns away, people are just going to kill people with something else.” At a lunch me…
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…trange as the comparison may seem, what we’re seeing today is highly reminiscent of the shifting landscape of the Christian world in the second and third centuries, and concerns a truism of Christian history: orthodoxy does not appear at the beginning of a movement, it’s the result of a long, and painful, and drawn-out argument that was, as often as not, a violent one. Heresy, if you will, comes first. Or rather, a diversity of opinion about what…
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…ised British youth are no more able to afford the Nikes and iPads and flat-screen TVs that are ceaselessly spun into their psyches as inaccessible markers of meaning and status, than they are tickets to a Premier League match. A Spiritual War? This, at least, is the gist of much of the heated banter on the uprisings on the Facebook fan page of trip hop duo Massive Attack, where one fan drew something of a spiritual assessment from the film Fight C…
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…Francis papacy. The phenomenon of a pope becoming a pop culture icon is fascinating, troubling, and not a little confusing. Here are a few of the puzzles I’m struggling with as I try to make sense of the current Catholic religious scene. 1. Pope and Papacy All of the enthusiasm about Francis’ style does not change the fact that the institutional Roman Catholic Church is a rigid hierarchy led by a pope—the warm feelings in response to Francis shor…
Read More…. Even if the city does go to court tomorrow and narrow the the subpoenas’ scope, the damage has already been done, as Scott’s tweet suggests: for conservatives, the cause celebre is already in motion, and is unlikely to be dialed back. Andy Taylor, the lawyer for the plaintiffs in the case, is headlining a fundraiser next week for the US Pastors’ Council, which is headed by Welch. Tickets for the event range from $1,000 to $10,000, and Mike Hucka…
Read More…can’t find any job; among younger males, especially African-Americans, the number is much higher—in many areas one in two workers is without work. Yet Congress, with a Democratic majority, can’t get it together to extend unemployment benefits. Our solons just flew out of town for a weeklong holiday vacation. Republicans, joined by Democratic deficit hawks, insist that any extension be “deficit neutral” and come out of unspent stimulus money. But…
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