Religion Dispatches
…it is not private. Love for God and love for one another are connected. 1 John 4:20 puts it this way “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” Black theology challenges white Christians to love our black brothers and sisters not in a cloying or condescending way, but with real justice. In a nation marked b…
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…We have an unprecedented access to cheap goods, yet we must recognize that cheap goods are cheaply made. I am not speaking of quality, I am speaking of cheap labor. We must recognize that through the act of shopping, whether it is for an article of clothing, a toy, a pint of strawberries, or even our morning cup of coffee, we participate in a global economy that values profit over people. Disposable goods are made by disposable people, faceless in…
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…e success either. The opening weekend saw sales of more than $6 million in tickets. That’s the kind of number that will inspire others to try and figure out the formula for the faith-and-family blockbuster. Yet, with the cost of the film reportedly exceeding $30 million, it’s an open question whether or not the Left Behind reboot will get a second installment. The marketing problem of evangelical movies is still, stubbornly, a problem. The general…
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…ou’ll read an excerpt below—has surprised me, too. I wish I could find my airline companion and give him this book, to surprise him, too—in a good way. (I would accept Lakers tickets in lieu of apologies, but I think that particular era is done.) This whole book is a result of a profound evolution, and needs to be seen as such. American Muslims have gone through a lot over the last few decades. We were never the caricature Islamophobes made us ou…
Read More…es, it would still pay less than offering a plan. Although Chief Justice John Roberts asked whether offering health insurance to its employees was part of Hobby Lobby’s religious commitment, other justices were skeptical. Ginsburg shot back that “provision of health care is not a religious tenet,” and Kagan distinguished between “wanting to be a good employer” and “saying your religious beliefs” compel providing a health insurance plan. Solicitor…
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…of its service that could serve as a script for heaven’s own automated telephone response system: “Your prayer concerns are important to us,” OurPrayer.org says, “and that’s why each and every prayer request we receive is prayed for by a trained volunteer by name and by need.” Such uses of Twitter make it part of a long tradition of technology’s tendency to remake faith in its own image. According to Franklin and Marshall College’s John Lardas Mod…
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…and football, but whatever the reasons for why Thanksgiving endures while Columbus Day is (rightly) challenged, Indian militant Johnny P. Flynn [a loss RD still mourns] asks us to maybe look a bit closer at the last Thursday in November. If Columbus Day uncomplicatedly celebrates genocide and ethnic cleansing, then an honest accounting must consider the ways in which Thanksgiving similarly countenances such things, even while the myths of the day…
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…te segregation and economic favoritism. When I spoke with Rothstein on the phone, he underscored the long-term effects of this last policy. During the 1940s and 1950s, suburban subdivisions were built in St. Louis, and throughout the country, using federal loans stipulating that no homes be sold to African Americans. Priced at about $125,000 in today’s dollars, these were affordable—with a mortgage—to working class families, black or white. Yet bl…
Read More…and the upcoming “fortnight for freedom.” Gallicho examines the Knights of Columbus tax return, and finds that it “donated about $1 million to the Vatican. But the Knights of Columbus doesn’t cut checks just to Rome. In 2010, the organization gave close to $2 million dollars to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. And it donated $25,000 to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is spearheading the legal challenges to the contraception ma…
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…ment of 50,000, as if the faithful at church. The devotion was audible, as tickets were distributed to friends of the Cuban government and not through a public sale. Here the religious nature of the Cuban sporting event is acknowledged only to be dismissed as inauthentic. The patriotic, quasi-religious crooning is suspicious because of its apparent production by the Cuban government, which distributed tickets to friends. Morosi recognizes religiou…
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