Religion Dispatches
…ership of Mormon Church president Brigham Young, the ordination of African-American men ceased, African-American men and women were prohibited from temple worship, and intermarriage was officially discouraged. Some historians believe that Young’s about-face on the status of African Americans may have been motivated by embarrassment stemming from an 1847 scandal involving an excommunicated African-American Mormon named William McCary, or by politic…
Read More…es of pro-homosexual forces in Europe and beyond.” The European arm of the American Center for Law and Justice also filed a memorandum in the case Indonesia: Will LGBT content be banned from TV? As we have been reporting, religious and political leaders have been responsible for a wave of anti-LGBT rhetoric this year. Now it looks as if LGBT content could be banned from the airwaves. The Jakarta Post’s Nurul Fitri Ramadhani reports: As the House o…
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…ngs as well. By analyzing the autobiographical narratives of three African Americans who made religious pilgrimages, respectively, to Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism, I seek to accent that diversity. As the most well-known Muslim in American history, Malcolm X represents a tangent in relation to the Standard Narrative, as does the Judaism of Julius Lester and the Buddhism of Jan Willis. Writing this book was personal. I see myself as an intersection…
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…. Louis skyline from where our group stood on the mounds, was a “symbol of American terrorism” to the black communities that its construction displaced. Through eminent domain, 37 blocks of homes and businesses in the thriving black St. Louis community were razed to make room for a monument to the United States’ western expansion. To add insult to injury, discriminatory hiring policies made many of the promised construction jobs unavailable to non…
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…is about one animal metamorphosing into another animal. Lin titles it “The Flight of the Peng Bird.” This is his version: In the Northern Sea, there is a giant fish. Its name is Kun. Its size is incredibly large. No one knows how many thousands of miles its length measures. The Kun fish is able to transform into a bird, known as Peng. The Peng bird is also incredibly large. No one knows how many thousands of miles its wingspan measures. Peng chang…
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…s the ability to instantly acquire the skills she needs to get through the flight simulator. She argues in effect that she doesn’t want to do things the easy way; she wants to earn her way through the virtual world. I am reminded of the ongoing debates around multiplayer games about what constitutes cheating and whether it is appropriate for a character to pay real cash to buy a ready-made avatar which can function at higher levels than they have…
Read More…was made out to be and explains his theodicy as a response to his family’s flight from the Armenian genocide in Turkey. His whole life project was to try to figure out what could protect you. In the end, he came down to the only thing that is solid is God’s law. Well, you say the word law in the 20th or 21st century, and people break out in a rash. I’m not sure why she used the word theodicy — which is an attempt to answer the theological problem…
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…at was supposed to be the original site of the Academy Awards. Post white-flight in the sixties and seventies Inglewood became a predominantly African American community. It now “boasts” an eclectic array of faith institutions from Church of Scientology storefronts to mosques. I think the cover evokes many of the book’s themes about whiteness, innocence and redemption; bringing it full circle to the last chapter which explores the racial politics…
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…ers were not usable in most places; they were usable in Ferguson. So large numbers of African Americans who were displaced by urban renewal, by slum clearance in the central city, moved outside the central city, north and west, into places like Ferguson. Since African Americans were prohibited from living in most other places, those communities became predominantly or nearly all black. So that’s how Ferguson became the Ferguson we know today. Why…
Read More…accouterments favored by overseas contractors rather than the fatigues and flight suits of the military.” Sounds kind of cool. Except that these casually dressed folks have the power to wield lethal force with almost no accountability. Nothing like dropping in a lot of trigger-happy hired guns to win hearts and minds, right? The U.S. commander upon whom Obama has placed responsibility for winning what he calls a “war of necessity” in Afghanistan,…
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