Religion Dispatches
…eft with the much more compact, and much more readable text as it stands today, which focuses on the period from the nineteenth century to the 1930s. Some scholars may wonder how large these groups were, especially since African American Protestantism is assumed to be so large and powerful. How do you respond to those searching to answer that ever-elusive problem of how “representative” these groups and leaders were? One of the joys of writing thi…
Read More…the possibility that the United States as a nation has not lived up to the best of its democratic ideals, has not represented in its internal practices and foreign policies the commitment to freedom that fuels its rhetoric. And, while we’re at it, we might throw into the mix some attention to our materialism and its awkward and distorting presentation. There is something useful in examining the policies and practices of our nation and demanding th…
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…ess. But the questions relevant to the lives of ordinary Western Muslims today do not concern their superiority or inferiority in relation to other faiths—still less, the management of a medieval empire. The fundamental challenge is the same one that everyone else faces: how best to live alongside people who hold different beliefs. That calls for mutual respect—and though that imposes society-wide responsibilities, Muslims can play their specific…
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…r point was that art may not survive democracy. Borders are necessary. Our best art and our best ideas ought to be kept out of reach if they’re to do any real work in the world. As it goes with art, so it is with religion. Give your beliefs a tough shell or skin and the uninvested (some say undeserving) will pass it by. Thick skin protects what’s inside by sometimes repulsing even those willing to give it a try. Thin-skinned ideas on the other han…
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…ut the design that I selected—with the help of my partner, Kamilah Legette—best visualizes the play between the opaque and the iridescent or, as Du Bois might say, the twilight of dawn and dusk. I cannot imagine a better press to work with. Is there a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? That would be Saidiya Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America. The book is brilliant in…
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…tances that lead to such destruction. To be sure, there were calls in the days after December 14 for this deep and meaningful silence. But what bothered me were the attempts to find space for a loving God in the context of this misery. I don’t mean the ridiculous and easily dismissed attempt to use this tragedy as a call for prayer in schools, or as a justification for reintroducing the Bible and removing secular approaches to human history. No,…
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…re in fact using “religious freedom” as a cover to deny women, children, sexual minorities, and others access to basic needs and protections. The WCF may want to take us back to the Dark Ages, but they’re not afraid to use modern human rights systems to get there. On the final day of the conference Paul Herzog Von Oldenburg, the Belgian president of the right-wing Catholic group Tradition, Family and Property, summarized it best: “our great aim, o…
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…kids’ awakening to the artistry and moral challenge that rock music at its best can deliver, Nirvana will provide the soundtrack to the fading images of one friend after another lost to the heroin that hit the alternative music scene in Atlanta as Nevermind hit the charts. Could anything be further from the nihilism of Nirvana’s distorted and driving chords than R.E.M.’s qualified insistence that the articulation of meaning and the comfort of comm…
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…lly to a logic that treated the relative ‘Jewishness’ of a teaching as the best test of its truth or falsity.” Marcion, Tertullian, Justin, Origen and Jerome differed on crucial Christological and scriptural questions; still most identified any hint of carnality as “Jewish” and accused their opponents of “Judaizing.” Augustine took the trope even further, arguing in Against Faustus that the Jews were the living exemplar of falsity, “proof to belie…
Read More…(PLAL) urging supporters to pray for abortion advocates and providers each day during Lent, and to forego one meal a week for them, might be an olive branch worth celebrating. But it’s the execution of the campaign that’s left many dubious of PLAL’s claim that this is a good faith effort. Executive Director Eric Scheidler says that his organization called for similar actions last year, minus the names and photos of those for whom they seek prayers…
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