Religion Dispatches
…e requires some creativity and thoughtfulness; marking the appearance of a new decade, or a new century, proves to be far more challenging than remembering to change the year on the checks and Thank You notes I write in January. This time around, there’s no escaping the fact that our collective feet are now planted firmly in the twenty-first century. And it is worth reflecting on what this dawning perspective (of seeing ourselves as twenty-first…
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…, does not believe that the Hills knew what they saw. In doing so he reproduces the dynamic of the skeptical expert who, he argues, led the Hills to become spiritual seekers in the first place. In the culture of new age spirituality they found a new place to feel at home after their rejection by the establishment. Yet even in this careful retelling, they remain outside the boundary of legitimate knowledge….
Read More…rds” against gays, and the time has come to respond. Referring to the 1969 New York riots that became a milestone in the American gay rights movement, he said, “The church needs a Stonewall.” Hong Kong: Catholic Bishop Defends Cardinal, Compares Homosexuality to Drug Abuse Bishop Michael Yeung Ming-cheung of the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong, defending a political letter from Cardinal John Tong opposing marriage equality and anti-discrimination pr…
Read More…theist Delusions (Yale University Press), Reitan’s work chops away at the “new” of new atheism. The subtle notion of “new” suggests in itself some progress, which, again, we need to revisit without the glorification of man on the mind. Christopher Lasch’s question is as urgent today as it was when he posed it 18 years ago in his book The True and Only Heaven How does it happen that serious people continue to believe in progress, in the face of mas…
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…, and perhaps more of a rumble than a quake. And while the durability of a new movement is always difficult to assess when it’s young, it is nonetheless already clear that the politics of the “new” evangelicals are more complicated than its evangelists often portray. Pally’s essay is an update of her 2011 book and essay on the same subject, both of which appeared during the 2012 presidential campaign. In this latest essay she takes stock of evange…
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…e intolerance. The New Atheism’s Positive Contributions At their best, the New Atheists foster a renewed sense of respect for science, spur on social progress, and empower the growing but reviled nontheistic minority to find its voice in America’s public square. Public support for science is notoriously low in the United States, especially when it comes to culturally controversial topics such as the origin of life and humanity, embryonic stem-cell…
Read More…This is because society recognises the importance of the setting in which new human life, new members of society come into existence. “It is of vital importance to society that the definition of marriage is protected, sustained and supported.” India: Couple’s high-profile marriage in defiance of anti-gay law BuzzFeed reported last week on a gay couple that was married in a religious ceremony at the end of January. “A Sanskrit teacher conducted th…
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…council meetings. Criminalizing libraries and librarians While most of the new playbook isn’t really new, and simply builds on its original themes, there is one new model bill that bears special attention because it builds out a new dimension of Project Blitz’s religious and political vision, and exposes their view of democratic institutions. Indeed, the bill became infamous months before it morphed into a secret model in the Project Blitz playboo…
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…hemes of his presidency: to call the UCC to rethink itself and to consider new ways of “being church.” Postmoderns, he says, are less interested in institutional religion than their predecessors and tend not to be joiners but “samplers.” “A whole new way of discovering the life of faith is emerging without the permission of or training required by the established church,” he writes in Beyond Resistance. “Those engaged in this faith exploration are…
Read More…the death of the oh-so-very-tired. Visceral, extremely bloody and painful, new life is new life, to be celebrated in all its mewling imperfection. It signals new beginnings, new possibilities and new terrains. What form will new life take? What is the nature of a new Egypt? Is it tall and strong? Does it have a mind of its own? What color will it be? Red, blue or green? Will it look different from what we expected? What developmental trajectory wi…
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