Religion Dispatches
…s in America because of sanctuary cities. This incendiary statement is, at best, unproven. At worst, it is a willful distortion of the best research and data available. Crime rates among undocumented immigrants are notoriously difficult to track accurately, in part for the reason Clarke recognized. But the allegation that sanctuary cities are “havens” for violence is patently false. There is simply no evidence to suggest that cities that decline t…
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…ly rejected the claim that allowing trans folks to use the facilities that best match their gender identity leads to any increase in reports of harassment or assault in such spaces. It just doesn’t work that way. In fact, if anyone has anything to fear it should be transgender people since they’re actually more likely than their cisgender peers to be harassed and assaulted in sex-segregated spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms. And with high-pro…
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…the school’s chapters of Amnesty International and Men Can Stop Rape. Sometimes he’s the only one at the meetings, despite the hours spent putting up posters and pestering his friends. Turns out those two clubs are not as popular as, say, varsity sports, or the spring musical. But Zach isn’t doing this to up the numbers. Some things are more important than being popular. Zach attends a church that has been very public about being open and affirmi…
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…or while allowing the audience to feel exactly that. The fringe group this time, obviously, is Scientology. The conceit of My Scientology Movie is that because Theroux couldn’t get anyone from the church to talk to him, he decides to investigate “the spirit of Scientology” by hiring actors to re-enact moments from church history, most notably the violent tirades of its current leader, David Miscavige. To make his fake movie, Theroux elicits the he…
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…n Vladimir Putin has his own renegade holy man. The spiritual father knows best The trouble arises from what’s actually one of the more humane and helpful customs of Orthodox Christianity: the spiritual father. (There are technically spiritual mothers as well, but the exclusion of women from the ordained clergy has historically kept their numbers small.) Deriving from the ancient Egyptian monastic tradition (the oldest in the Christian world), it’…
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…hat’s really there. And If you can’t fully communicate what you believe is best for African Americans at the NAACP convention, you can’t do it anywhere. So what was this speech about? I believe it was, in part, an obligation Romney knew he had to fulfill, but it also helped to reinforce the Tea Party racial grievances. It also allowed him to show his chutzpah by saying “Obamacare” in a convention hall that was populated predominately by African Am…
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…ht be transferable to other types of available labor, and to “build on the best practices learned from Katrina and Rita.” A United Neighborhoods Approach Some of those best practices were honed at the Mary Queen Viet Nam church, where those helping to rebuild gathered, eating together from their own hands for months in the flood’s aftermath. They didn’t stop at bricks and mortar; community activism gave birth to organizations such as the Mary Quee…
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…is dismissiveness. Amid the Mudslinging, Some Thoughtful Discussion By the time The Amazing Meeting rolled into Vegas, nerves were raw. It seemed like everyone was both sick of hearing about Elevatorgate, and still nursing at least a little irritation toward what they perceived as either the sexism and insensitivity or the political correctness of their fellow atheists. Those of us in attendance dealt with it the best way we knew how—by joking abo…
Read More…onal loyalty. But this show, if extended beyond its immediate 30-minute airtime, projects a different posture: actions have consequences. Perhaps the United States, like Earl, must examine its conduct, recognize the web-like nature of human interactions, and acknowledge at least the possibility that the United States as a nation has not lived up to the best of its democratic ideals, has not represented in its internal practices and foreign policie…
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…end language. Elsewhere the cause of the apocalypse is ambiguous—something best illustrated in Gene Wolfe’s “Mute,” in which two children watch news reports about a mysterious disaster on a television with no sound. They know the world is falling apart, but they don’t know how or why. Despite this parade of nightmares, there’s a pervasive sense of optimism in these stories—an optimism that, paradoxically, lies at the heart of all post-apocalyptic…
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