Religion Dispatches
…erved the massive development of YouTube and Google, the ubiquity of smart phones and mobile devices, and the rise of Facebook and Twitter, which boast nearly a billion and half a billion respectively. For good and for ill, we are available 24/7 for communications via multiple lines of digital contact. Amidst this chaotic stew of interactive entertainment Benedict has worked to figure out, with increasing urgency and frustration, just what the Chu…
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…he Untouchables), which came out almost a year ago and sold twenty million tickets in France (and nearly as many abroad). Intouchables is a funny and moving comedy, but as politically correct a story as you’ll find: a black young man bordering on delinquency is hired by a tetraplegic wealthy man to be his assistant-nurse-chauffeur. They have a ball together doing crazy—and sometimes nasty—things, and save each other from an apparently inexorable f…
Read More…Back from my Bloggingheads hiatus, I talk with Get Religion’s Mollie Hemingway about whether Mitt Romney’s plan to discuss his Mormonism tonight at the Republican National Convention benefit his candidacy: And we also discussed the significance of the fact that Barack Obama is the only Protestant on both presidential tickets: …
Read More…side of Temple Square, cheerfully singing hymns from the screens of their iPhones or from green-backed hymnals, while a clutch of protestors—evangelical Christians, mostly, the same familiar, ragged gang materializing every conference—takes its place behind barricades on a small patch of grass. A stranger, upon learning that I don’t have one of the highly-coveted tickets to the Sunday Conference sessions, spontaneously offers me his last extra. Mi…
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…University of Southern California Religious consciousness, whether Navajo sand-painting or Catholic Mass, perceives and embraces the presence of the Dead, and does so in ritual. In the 1960s, the new consciousness from California was opening up, ripping the seams of modernity by way of sound, and pursuing what had been the norm of civilization for 1700 years prior to the modern period— an openness to mystery and the transcendent, consulting the s…
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…ents, booked an on-campus venue, and began to advertise the event and sell tickets. Then, 11 days before the drag fundraiser was set to take place, WT President Walter Wendler, who has a record of inserting his right-wing Christian bias into his public roles, unilaterally canceled the performance via a pedantic email. Seidel tells the story of the drag show cancelation at West Texas A&M (clip=5.5 minutes): Much of the moralizing communique was cou…
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…x Revolt of 1377, which fed into to the more extensive and more violent Peasants Rising of 1381. As literary historian Steven Justice has shown us, the Rising had everything to do with how ordinary people were using the new media of the day (vernacular spiritual texts for common education and political broadsides for common expression) to “assert the rights of the laity to the intellectual, as to the material, goods of the institutional church.” F…
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…d they hope eventually more will show up, to the tune of thousands and thousands. Benita Pedersen, an organizer from Alberta, was interviewed by a sympathetic Christian YouTube channel about what they’re doing. Pedersen says she felt a “call on her heart” to do this. She’d been given a steer horn by a local farmer. She knew she had to bring it to Ottawa and that she had to do a Jericho March. She’s now using that steer horn as a shofar. She says t…
Read More…people for “therapies” that can destroy them psychologically, while buying tickets to Toscano’s shows might result in some good belly laughs, but no pressure to convert. What makes this story so shameful, though, is how the true message is completely glossed over in the pursuit of finding out who is “right” and who is “wrong.” Both Wyler and Toscano are Christian men who were given the message early on in their lives that being gay or lesbian was…
Read More…uccess Magazine—a glossy dedicated entirely to uplifting the world’s successful people. One gander at the magazine itself shows that the word success is decidedly defined as “people who have made a ton of money doing what they do.” The fact that they inspire folks like Osteen or Dr. Phil just makes the story that much more touchy-feely. They’re saying, “see, you can be a good person and be rich. Not all rich people are heartless bastards.” Osteen’…
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