Religion Dispatches
…oes not cause participation in religious groups, digital social engagement parallels local religious engagement. Where these two paths intersect would seem to be a particularly fruitful locale for socio-spiritual encounter. Social networking platforms, as was evidenced in another Pew report released earlier this year, are particularly meaningful sites for encouraging and supporting active participation in local groups. This of course includes chur…
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…ounding hashtags like “#SaveOurChildren.” People preoccupied with real social evils like child pornography and sexual abuse can find themselves drawn into starker, more graphic worlds of conspiracy speculation. Indeed, as a recent New York Times op-ed argues, this anxious concern for children’s welfare, has invited the attention of increasing numbers of young women to the social-media culture inspired by QAnon and to the social media sites where Q…
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…en far less frequent and considerably less public. But contemporary political alliance is only half of the answer, perhaps not even the most important half. The white nationalist movement is invested in a very specific historical narrative. Within this narrative, Western civilization has been felled by attack from without and decay from within. The only hope for its continued survival is a stubborn insistence on resistance, a hunkering down behind…
Read More…even more. This is the genius of trolling: it is a particular strategy to paralyze moral response. And it seems ideally suited for a world in which attention is currency and anonymity is easy to come by. A version of this paradox exists in the realm of mass shootings, too. Acts of random violence often seem, in part, to function as dramatic plays for attention or celebrity status. The Orlando nightclub shooter reportedly checked his phone for new…
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…part of a broader narrative in which God helps the underdog in this life. Find a Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Christian and they will tell you that this is what saints and icons have done all along. My mom called me back after her first anxious call. With calm assurance, she said, “They won. The Lord is with him, Sean.” And also with you….
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…phobia aren’t just missing out on a strategic opportunity to highlight the parallels between their own experiences and those of other disenfranchised religious minorities—they’re opting out of an opportunity to do what is right, to take the moral high road, and to demonstrate what we keep telling the rest of the world: that atheists can be “good without God.” There’s been a great deal of discussion in the atheist movement recently about social jus…
Read More…the group hacked into CEO Aaron Barr’s accounts, releasing his private e-mails online and publicizing its actions on Twitter. When critics like former Anonymous member Jennifer Emick accused the group of hypocrisy for violating people’s privacy rights, members of the group sent her highly misogynistic and sexualized threats. In these ways, vigilante groups like Anonymous run the risk of undermining the type of civil disobedience that springs from…
Read More…e the Greek myth of Cronus, Americans have a deep-seated fear that their children will overthrow them. During the Red Scare, it was the communists who could reportedly persuade impressionable youth to kill their parents. In the 1970s, it was “cults.” In the 1980s it was Satanists. In 1996, while crime waves dropped across the country, both Bob Dole and Bill Clinton vowed to protect America from “Super Predators”—youth born into a state of “moral p…
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…ction, to “show participants the consequences of choosing the gift of eternal salvation… as well as experiencing a small part of the separation from God in hell that is the consequence of rejecting that same gift.” Although the Judgement House scripts do make a conscious effort to avoid the language of the culture wars, the symbols are still present and powerful. One of their scripts entitled “Home of the Brave, Land of the Free” tells a story of…
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…ng, lightly edited for length and clarity. Satanic Harmonies D.L. from Normal, Illinois wrote in response to my column on the New York Times coverage of the “high priestess of satanic harmonies” Anna von Hausswolff: I remember back in my seminary days (1970s – pre-Reagan era). I was so sure that we had found the key to the relationship between religion and the public square: specifically that public policy ideas and commitment could be rooted in r…
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