Religion Dispatches
…derstand why—it’s striking and conveys the sense that the Devil created by American culture is made in the image of American culture. How do you feel about the cover? I do love the cover. I hope readers note that there is a Highway 666 that runs through several western states. Not surprisingly, hosts of urban legends have grown up around it. Is there a book out there you wish you had written? Definitely Stephen Prothero’s American Jesus: How the…
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…the ways in which the idea of God’s chosen people morphs into the idea of American exceptionalism—at times underwriting American imperialistic tendencies. Feiler’s now-formulaic promotion of a biblical figure to resolve conflicts at the intersections of religion and politics may be a successful recipe for book sales. But one wishes that Feiler would use his literary gifts to tell a more complicated story of the interweaving of religion and politi…
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…s duplicity. The letters (signs) can be read two ways: they represent both American Beauty and American Reality. In western thought, beauty and reality are of a piece since the good, the true, and the beautiful inform and form each other. But beauty can deceive, money talks, and power attracts. The Dead understand and critique this duplicity. In order to understand it they conjure American figures who exemplify this contradiction, a sort of courag…
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…lues, values which Philip Gorski, in his recent and impassioned defense of American civil religion, American Covenant, expands beyond simply freedom to include equality, “national solidarity (‘We, the People, in order to form a more perfect union’), the common good (or ‘general welfare’) and active citizenship,” suggesting that “civic inclusion and recognition should perhaps be added to our national creed as well.” Tyranny isn’t merely the opposit…
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…o longer feel like a threat or problem, but a realization of hope for “a more perfect union.” It is to echo, in a different way, Du Bois’s insistence—that one can be Hindu and American, Muslim and American, Buddhist and American; and that perhaps this possibility can lead to transformation for us all….
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…zona. When the police arrested the shooter, he said: “I’m a patriot and an American. I’m American. I’m a damn American.” Muslim girl power The fictional war between America and “Muslims” (including actual Muslims, those who “look like” Muslims, and those who live close to Muslims, like Iraqi Christians) is perpetuated and extended by the uncritical visuality of the news media. While I believe the war is based on fictional understandings of “Muslim…
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…cta heightened by the strategically offensive, scatological title; Serrano offers a vitriolic critique of what he takes to be the Church’s profiteering trinketization of Christianity. For Serrano and those of like mind, Piss Christ is not in any straightforward way sacrilege (a violation of holy things) nor is it simply blasphemy (ridiculing or transgressing that which has been consecrated, set apart for holy purposes). Rather, in his juxtapositio…
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…ple born between about 1961 and 1981) and Baby Boomers (people born between 1946 and about 1959). According to Schwadel’s examination of data from the General Social Survey, adults raised by Baby Boomer parents are more likely to have no religious affiliation—to be religious “Nones,” in current social research parlance. The unaffiliated religious status of Gen-Xers can be attributed to high rates of Boomers disaffiliation in the 1960s that was pas…
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…ight! Just probably not on the John Paul II Facebook page. The page, which offers videos highlights from the life of John Paul II, has garnered an impressive amount of global traffic. Alas, the fact that more than 13,000 around the world “liked” the page in the first days it was up does not mean that it is enriching or extending relationships. It’s cool to see people offering shout-outs to the late pope in just about every language you can think o…
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…lary would be a swear, we kept it,” explains Caleb. He cites the example of 1 Kings 18:27. “That passage in the Hebrew is saying to them: ‘Your God can’t hear you. He’s off taking a crap in the bushes.’ So we kept ‘shit’ there. But there were other places where we had ‘shit’ because a swear would make it funnier and then we decided to cut that out in those places.” I later consult the Oxford Annotated Bible where a tiny footnote confirms: the Hebr…
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