Religion Dispatches
…s book is an experiment in translating those ideas and reframing them into great stories. While writing the book I thought about scholars and the academic study of religion, but I also thought about the spirituality and self-help section at Barnes & Noble, the interfaith world, and poets. And that’s one of the aspects of the book I really enjoyed, the different disciplines that you draw from, that we’re not used to reading about in the study of re…
Read More…nding angry, alienated young men who can be talked into foolish acts is no great challenge. It was angry young men in earlier days who donned white hoods to protect “good, Protestant Americans” not just from the “menace” of racial integration, but the “dire influence” of Catholics and Jews. We have seen the same anger and alienation in films of racist hate rallies, whether in anti-Semitic rallies in Germany in the 1930s, in Alabama in the 1960s, o…
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…xt, may all Members be mindful that the institutions and structures of our great nation guarantee the opportunities that have allowed some to achieve great success while others continue to struggle. May their [the Members’] efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans. As someone deeply steeped in Catholic social justice tradition, Conroy has made it clear t…
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…ressors, in the end they would have become aggressors. Therefore, God took great pains to prevent the Israelites from enacting any vengeance against the evil ones; so much so that he prohibited them from even witnessing it. Thus, the [violent] act was deployed “in the middle of the night” in the darkest hour of the night. God also warned the Israelites not to leave their houses, all to separate them from this destructive act, even to witness it pa…
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…ter mark during the Reagan years clearly understimated this movement’s capacity to keep bouncing back. Keddie does an admirable job of showing how Trumpism combines “an allegiance to many of the traditional ‘family values’ positions of the ‘old Religious Right’ with the Tea Party’s resentment politics and the Prosperity Gospel’s glorification of wealth.” Keddie also offers a good answer to those who claim to be puzzled by the marriage between pro-…
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…ed, “You can never understand hell, though, until first you understand the great love, mercy, and grace of God, and it should never be preached by any preacher without tears.” (Graham did not tear up at any point on the video, though he described himself as speaking with a “broken heart.”) Hell was not, Graham asserted, created for human beings, but for the devil and his angels. Humans find themselves in hell when they reject God—and hell begins i…
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…ance has waxed and waned, as Americans have surfed the spiritual swells of Great—and not so great—Awakenings. The Eisenhower and Kennedy presidencies marked the high-water point of one of these awakenings. It wasn’t an awakening in the classical sense. There was no George Whitefield riding the length and breadth of the Colonies on horseback—although we did have Billy Graham baiting Reds and filling football stadiums. What packed American pews was…
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…rkle as she discusses the role of Christian women in today’s world, the pitfalls and distractions we should avoid, and how we should approach rebuilding the ruins of the West.” This framing of what, in my opinion, is indoctrination posing as documentary is troubling as it is deceiving, but it’s unfortunately not an original concept, as other high-control groups have produced similar films for their followers. Before Eve in Exile, there was The Ret…
Read More…r is generally forbidden—until that point where the level of tyranny is so great that you could say that the threat of violence emanating from the civil upheaval that might arise due to a revolution is substantially less than what would result from leaving him in place. People aren’t making that argument exactly now. But it’s the same sort of logic that is being utilized, with an added twist—exhaustion. Even before the Egyptian president made his…
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…context, but in a spiritual one. Of all of my mothers and grandmothers and great-great-grandmothers back to our ancestral Eve, I’ll be the first not to bear children. “Family” means something different now—not just my own blood, but a larger communion of the self in the world. I write every morning in my kitchen, stirring my coffee with one of Grammy’s spoons. I’ll never use it in a grand candlelit dinner with my children and their children. It’s…
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