Religion Dispatches
…ction is new, and it has a subtly religious texture quite probably lost on most of us, especially the most aggressively secular heirs to the French Revolution. For the Olympics are deeply and abidingly religious. They always have been. First, then, to the historical facts. The Olympic Games were an essential part of a religious festival sponsored every four years at the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia. These Games lasted for more than a millennium, r…
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…reign faith; the true enemy is the enemy within: It is Christian Modernism. Make no mistake, the Modern revolutions in technology and weaponry, in politics and diplomacy, have much to answer for. European gunpowder imperialism is one of its chief legacies. But if post-Modernism is aiming at suggesting what is missing in the Modern age, then anti-Modernism is aiming solely at what is wrong with Modernism. This Pope has posed as a post-Modern thinke…
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…ncluding that a woman who attacks her abuser simply hates men. Even at the most basic level, there’s a responsibility to demand evidence before allowing antisemitism to be quickly assigned as the most likely answer. This question becomes especially important in a situation where Jews are overwhelmingly the more powerful party in the equation. “By radically decontextualizing such violence, and by claiming that the motivating force for any act again…
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…, or what have you. Since I try to introduce an historical perspective in most of my classes, I find myself speaking of decades, and centuries, and millennia, almo*]}*st as a matter of natural course. And for some reason, I have found it very difficult to stop speaking as if we lived still in the twentieth century. Describing the passage of time in one’s own lifetime a decade at a time requires some creativity and thoughtfulness; marking the appearan…
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…ultipolar world more seriously. Nobel Prizes are a largely Western affair. Most rankings, judgments and pronouncements on the “best of” this or the “worst of” that are absent Muslim considerations—all the more grating since one of four people in the world are Muslim. Though, to be fair, the present Muslim world’s scientific (and other academic) achievements leave much to be desired; I will be the first to demand a sober appreciation of where and h…
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…er to send text-messages—is simply groundless. East Africans are among the most adept users of cell phones in the world. The plot twists at the end raise questions about the racial politics of the show. Only a threat of American violence saves the villagers from the tyranny of the local warlord. Only the ingenuity of the white men provides Africans a useful religion. The dewy-eyed boys from Utah share the genius of Joseph Smith: the Yankee spirit…
Read More…at, indeed, Foster’s problem isn’t homosexuality, but (as the title of his most recent book alludes to) sexual addiction, and gets the most bang (sorry) for his buck out of sex with men. Perhaps he has other psychological issues centering around shame or self-hatred or body image that lead him to prefer anonymous encounters over deeper, loving relationships. Perhaps what Foster really needed was a good psychotherapist to help him work through his…
Read More…gnor. Ireland: Marriage equality vote ‘transforms’ gay Ireland, no longer ‘most Catholic country in world’ Conor Humphries at Reuters writes that Ireland’s referendum in favor of marriage equality “is having a profound effect on the country’s gay community even though a legal challenge has delayed the first weddings.” Gay couples holding hands has become a common sight in Dublin and gay politicians have become celebrities after Ireland became the…
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…made anti-Christian. “Bottoms up,” she says, mimicking the motion. Weick’s most striking piece of evidence is the large, stylized letter M, which she claims is not one letter but the Hebrew letter Vav repeated three times. In Hebrew, letters have numerical values. The first letter, Alef, is also the number one; the second letter, Bet, is also the number two; etc. Vav, the sixth letter in the Hebrew alphabet and has the numerical value of six. Ther…
Read More…, like any other, is by no means definitive, but it may reveal the beginnings of a move away from support for DOMA, even among the most conservative religious voters….
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