Religion Dispatches
…oked. There are ghosts and graves in the yards of my neighborhood, and the number of skeletons—reclining on lawn chairs, sprouting up from the ground, beckoning from the shadows—has transformed the suburban landscape into a set for a George Romero film. In addition, and beyond bland suburbia, monsters, ghosts, skeletons, vampires, and other playful dead inhabit stores and sell products, entertain across the television dial, and instill a dreadfull…
Read More…mes and neighborhoods. The turnaround was so astounding that one year, the best sign at Atlanta’s gay pride read: “We can rehab marriage and sell it back to you at twice the price.” Seems that sign was a bit prescient. As more and more states accept same-sex marriage, researchers are showing that gays and lesbians have much to teach their straight counterparts about the institution they have been bogarting for the last few centuries. As Liz Mundy…
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…ge how they understand their own identity. If academic achievement and the number or type of initials after your name is the most important thing in the world to you, then it will change how you view your own masculinity and femininity. Similarly, if having children matters most to you, then you can only be truly “manly” or “feminine” if you have kids. Is there anything you had to leave out? Historians always want to include every interesting anec…
Read More…anasia), vocations and ongoing formation (shoring up the rapidly declining number of priests and nuns) and, of course, religious freedom (Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who arranged Kim Davis’ meeting with Pope Francis, received two standing ovations from the bishops.). Then the debate turned to the USCCB’s quadrennial “Faithful Citizenship” voting guide. The bishops had voted earlier to revise the 2007 edition prepared for the 2008 election, whic…
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…doctrinal statements from Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists and a good number of other traditions, but individuals may not feel those are binding, or they may feel their circumstances are exceptional,” he said. The Catholic Church hasn’t shifted its policies regarding end-of-life care, said Dierdre McQuade, and she explained that the difference between palliative sedation and physician-assisted death is intent. Even in the case of increasing m…
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…is that White people do not attend Juneteenth festivals in any appreciable numbers. This month I attended two Juneteenth festivals in the Columbia, South Carolina metropolitan area and the results were the same: minimum White attendance. Both events were free to the public, with ideal weather and plenty of good food and entertainment. Whereas a cross-section of Black America was in attendance, Whites stuck out like rice in chocolate pudding. But t…
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…ism; crime and chaos versus law. This name is not legion, but loser Like a number of his fellow speakers, Posobiec fixated on what he perceives as male virility, framing Joe Biden as the physical embodiment of the decay and decadence of failing liberalism: Liberalism itself is Joe Biden, a senile, selfish remnant of a failed world order which destroyed Western economies through invaders, sacrificed Western blood to its most freakish contents, and…
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…By studying vampires, we study ourselves. I am concerned that despite the best intention of many scholars, the term “new religious movement” (a label that has been applied to vampires) carries with it the subtext that a group is totally “other.” While it may be comforting to think that we are totally different from vampires, this is not the case. Rather, I see vampires as indicative of much broader changes in our society. Modernity has been a gra…
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…the Grateful Dead collectively formed an intentionally itinerant community numbering in the tens of thousands, with their own customs, vernacular, art, and economy. In his explanation of the lure of the Grateful Dead to thousands of Deadheads around the country, Garcia ruminated, “maybe we’re just one of the last adventures in America.” Indeed, the promise of a great American adventure animated Deadheads to undertake an annual pilgrimage across th…
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…ous as far back as the Persian Gulf War of 1991 when Israel was hit with a number of Iraqi missiles the Israeli government, which always boasts that it will respond harshly to any attack, did nothing because Washington put up a big red light. Washington appears to be flashing the red light once again. According to the Washington Times, “a senior Israeli official said that Israel has not asked for US aid or permission [to attack Iran] because the N…
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