Religion Dispatches
…feel the pain, the madness, that drove him to this desperate act? Can we truly suffer with him? The act of truly feeling compassion is hard work – and it’s work that we usually don’t see the point in doing. Why do I need to feel John Boehner’s pain? Why does an anti-gay person need to feel my pain? Why should we try to feel the pain of those without health insurance or without jobs? What good does that do? Doesn’t it just lead us further into des…
Read More
…pital. Yet, these post-industrial theologies rest on assumptions about the world that reify the socioeconomic structures behind the current economic crisis. Workplace spirituality imagines a future where businesses benevolently guide us toward peace, prosperity, and spiritual vitality; managers become therapeutic purveyors of spiritual wisdom and for-profit firms act as the ultimate arbiters of the social order. Still, when the former COO of Wal-M…
Read More…s vision of ‘fire’ at the Royal Wedding comes largely from The Mass on the World, completed in 1923.” Fire imagery is central to Teilhard’s writing and Bishop Curry’s selection bears some affinity with “The Mass on the World,” but the sermon’s most direct citation is from an essay titled “The Evolution of Chastity” written in 1934. I find this omission strange, but it could stem from Slattery’s desire to separate Teilhard’s work into an acceptable…
Read More
…gleaned from his recent praise of “silence” in the midst of the ceaseless rush of digital information, as expressed in his World Communications Day speech of 2012: “In our time, the Internet is becoming ever more a forum for questions and answers—indeed, people today are frequently bombarded with answers to questions they have never asked and to needs of which they were unaware. If we are to recognize and focus upon the truly important questions,…
Read More
…oncept of hell. Homosexuals are persecuted by almost every religion in the world, and women are subjugated by just about every religion in the world. Did you ever read Jimmy Carter’s resignation from the Southern Baptists? Let me find it. Here it is. So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention’s leaders, quoting a f…
Read More
…consider if genetic modification will reduce or increase suffering in the world, or dukkha. If the world becomes sick, so will we. It is therefore imperative to avoid creating additional harm in anything we do. Genetic modification is not necessarily harmful, but in order for healthful products to have their intended benefits, it is important that producing them is carried out within healthful social, economic, and ecological frameworks. In an es…
Read More
…came from Indian gardens. Over Christmas and Easter much of the Christian world will consume celebratory candies, pies, cakes, and soda made from chocolate and corn syrup which also originated from Indian gardens. Of course the pumpkins used for pie and Halloween, the potatoes, corn, squash, and even the pecan pie can be added to that list. They will soothe their swollen heads with aspirin, which is synthetic white willow bark, also brought to th…
Read More…mov, is a holdover from the Soviet era. He is also easily one of the most brutal rulers in the world, and his regime is known for huge human rights violations. But nevertheless, because of its size, population, and a land boundary with Afghanistan, the Obama administration is making a deal with the devil, trying to shift more of our war effort through this country instead of Pakistan. Unfortunately the war to give Afghanistan a more enlightened go…
Read More
…hegemony; a story of freedom and a story of unfreedom? This year the incongruities are much more acute. Jews worldwide will sit at a Seder and tell this story while children starve in Gaza, while mothers become childless, while people become homeless, while the stench of death fills the spring air. They will sit and tell this story still traumatized by the ruthless murder of 1,200 in Israel (including both Israelis and non-Israelis). But it isn’t…
Read More
…o Arab lesbians Hind al Nu’man and al-Zarqa by writing: “Oh Hind, you are truer to your word than men. Oh, the differences between your loyalty and theirs.” But it wasn’t just poets who valorized queer love and gender nonconformity, it was Muslim rulers themselves. The Abbasid Caliph al-Amin wrote passionate verses for his lover, Kawthar, who was famously either gender nonconforming or intersex. According to Sahar Amer, the queen mother, Zubayda,…
Read More