Religion Dispatches
…that Harkabi’s research of the ’70s and ’80s had led to a revision of his central thesis was not publicized in the United States. According to Harkabi, in the 1980s “Arab attitudes,” as expressed in the aftermath of the 1967 War, were changing, and were far from monolithic. If a settlement of the conflict was to take place, Israel’s attitudes and actions would determine it. In 1986, Harkabi spoke critically of the Jewish settlers in the territori…
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…stream Mormonism and punished by the state, it has become the defining and central expression of faith. At the Tribeca Film Festival, I sat down with directors Tyler Measom and Jennilyn Merten for an in-depth discussion about their documentary. How did your background as Mormons influence the making of this film? Tyler Measom: We both were active Mormons. I served on a mission for the LDS church for two years. Our families are still active in the…
Read More…expertise of conservative guests on the topics of the day. Today they are promoting John McTernan, who claims that the BP oil spill disaster is “Obama’s Katrina” because Obama’s poor treatment of Israel caused the catastrophe. McTernan, a former federal Treasury agent, also claims that the Bush administration’s sanction of the 2005 Gaza withdrawal has a biblical connection to Hurricane Katrina. The Special Guests press release adds, “In 2010, th…
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…isplay religious symbols in my office. A government seat is not a place to promote religion. I have not in this race campaigned in churches and I have declined to answer questions from all religious organizations that publish candidate voter guides. In your last post on the UCC’s national blog before your campaign, you took Fox News provocateur Glenn Beck to task for his claim that churches that advocate for social and economic justice are like Na…
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…ome ways, it is a continuation of the tattoos that we’ve discovered are so central to Tauran culture—a set of marks through which we negotiate between our identities and our histories. But we can also see it as the opposite of the tattoos. It looks like Taurans use tats to mark their social identities onto their bodies, while Tamara seems to use the mark to leave a trace of her personal identity upon the physical, external world. But given the way…
Read More…approximate the Vatican, or the Dalai Lama: Neither hosts nor represents a central Islamic authority.) But there’s more than just a poor series of contrasts, betraying an inability to grasp the fundamental structure of a faith and culture. And that is the idea that because one religion does something one way, other religions should be judged by the same measure; this gumption hints at the kind of flatness which can—as we see in some places in the…
Read More…ding on Capitol Hill. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the central player in pressuring the Democratic leadership to include the Stupak amendment in the House health care bill last fall, is frequently portrayed as less insidious than other religious right groups that also supported Stupak, because the USCCB supports health care reform, and those other groups just wanted to kill it altogether. The bishops call for “a truly universal…
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…he dominant modes of interpersonal expression and communication as well as central mechanisms in the construction of personal identity, social identity, and community. One Step Forward, Three or Four Centuries Back Yet, Web 2.0 and all that his effort attempts to be, I can’t help noticing how much the Pope’s World Communication Day message echoes themes of the 16th and 17th century Counter Reformation. Largely a response to the provocations of the…
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…g exploration of media and the effects of mediation. I don’t just mean the central representations of artificial consciousness and virtual worlds, but also more mundane forms of media practices which show how information gets recorded and transmitted. This week, for example, we have some throwaway lines about Uncle Sam Adama’s tattoos, which we are told signal to others in his community who he is and what he has done. His “tats” are a kind of info…
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…Christian experience (which, I argue in Satan in America, actually forms a central theme in the American religious experience). Angels, portrayed as warriors fighting beside evangelical Christians, became a hugely popular representation of spiritual life. Billy Graham’s 1975 Angels: God’s Secret Agents increased this fascination with angels, demons, and the possibility of spiritual warfare. Graham insisted that what he viewed as an increased inter…
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