Religion Dispatches
…, alcoholics identify (anonymously notwithstanding) as alcoholics, African-Americans as African-Americans, Muslims as Muslims. We identify with Islam. Even when pressed by bad publicity and bad actions by some of us, we still identify with Islam. Either/Or Why do people still think Muslim women must choose between identity as Muslims and identity with freedoms, human rights, dignity and democracy? For the first few decades of my work on gender I r…
Read More
…power on the worldwide stage, Qur’an-burning would be an assertion of that American power. Second, in a world where different religious texts are read and discussed more broadly than ever before, Qur’an burning would be an unequivocal statement that Christian canon was the only canon that mattered. Third, in a world where right-wing extremists frequently ignore their majority status and claim that they are a persecuted minority, Jones eagerly empl…
Read More
…e or similar versions to other states as well. In response, People for the American Way has begun a petition to send to publishers urging them to ignore the new guidelines. Others, including those who count themselves among the board’s most vehement critics, say the impact on the actual writing of textbooks may not be that dire. Still, that doesn’t spell good news for public education. For no matter what the outcome of the standards on textbooks—e…
Read More
…e Galactica remnant believed by the series’ finale. Since the last science class I took was in tenth grade, I can’t comment on the biology much less the neuroscience that separates humanity from artificial or sentient intelligence. But if we’re talking about the soul, the divine spark within, I bet most Americans are not ready to chalk it up to a sophisticated system of consciousness-enabling electrical processes. Caprica asks whether those proces…
Read More
…by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that nearly half of all American Christians agreed with the statement that “God will grant material prosperity to all believers who have enough faith,” with even higher numbers of Pentecostals and charismatic Christians agreeing with that statement. Go to any Word of Faith church, tune in to TBN, or read reams of books written by Word of Faith evangelists, and you will find the movement’s trademar…
Read More
…rged a 13th-century Sufi devotee who is devastatingly fluent in postmodern American English. As throngs of Americans now worship Rumi for the way he worshipped Allah—at a time in which “Allah” has become a scary word in the “Western world”—the political significance of Barks’ accomplishment cannot be overstated. Barks, a white man from Tennessee, doesn’t speak or read a lick of Persian, and this fact both complicates and facilitates his ability to…
Read More
…ee Brent Plate’s “Why Bill Maher Gets a ‘C’ in My Introduction to Religion Class”]. When I was watching Religulous in an Upper West Side theater in New York, it seemed to me that the laughter and shouted comments were just another version of “Amen!” and “Preach it brother!” I assumed these cries of affirmation were from the more spirit-filled atheists in the audience! In a moment of unintended self-parody, Maher even delivered an altar call at the…
Read More
…its students, crafted Liberty as an extension of his decades-long blitz on American politics and culture. Roose tried to do his homework before he arrived. He read C.S. Lewis’ apologetic works and Susan Harding’s classic study of the Lynchburg scene, The Book of Jerry Falwell. A Christian friend tutored him in some of the jargon. He decided to go undercover; to his new friends at Liberty, Roose said he had recently accepted Jesus as his personal s…
Read More
…ntury and sought to provide protection for Jews who were treated as second-class citizens in both Christian Europe and Muslim countries for many hundreds of years. The desire for a safe haven made perfect sense, though the antagonism that they encountered from many Palestinians made perfect sense as well given the previous history of Western colonialism and Christian crusades. Palestinians saw the Jews as an invading force that would uproot their…
Read More
If Scientists are the West’s last priestly class then Freeman Dyson might be our greatest heretic. Nicholas Dawidoff’s profile of the brilliant physicist in the New York Times Magazine illuminates a man who has always sought to subvert scientific consensus—most recently in denying the dangers of climate change and CO2 emissions. The story’s title, “The Civil Heretic,” signals the ghost of religion hanging in the background. It is the “secular rel…
Read More