Religion Dispatches
…ppears as a fake news article, or “advertorial,” on Newsmax, the semi-fake news website. Hyman in fact seems to work for the website, although his actual role is unclear—a recent bio says that he is part of its “Financial Brain Trust.” “A wise man looks well into a matter,” Proverbs, and Hyman, reminds us. While I wouldn’t make any claims to wisdom, I will say that I have looked into it and conclude that it would be foolish to give Hyman any of yo…
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…—anyone, male or female, could purchase a ticket on any day the museum was open, and wander freely among the nude statues of pagan deities. Then, just twenty years later in 1754, Pope Benedict XIV created the “Naked Academy” (l’Accademia del Nudo) inside the very palace where the Capitoline collection was housed. The idea was to promote the fine arts, by providing a space in which contemporary artists could sketch the naked human form, both from …
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…’d argue that the obstructionist forces opposed to health insurance for low-income Americans and for increased taxes on the wealthy are just the latest iteration of conservatives galvanized by FDR’s New Deal. And like older generations, many of today’s activists are as much motivated by religion as by politics and economics. Between 1933 and 1936, Roosevelt initiated a series of laws and executive orders to help Americans crushed by the Great Depr…
Read More…ooked. When the nobleman returns, after being established as king – a stand-in for Jesus – he calls all his servants together to see what they had accomplished in his absence. Ah. The kingdom Jesus is expecting upon his return is a free market system? Novel. Perkins goes on to argue that Jesus “rejected collectivism and the mentality that has occupied America for the last few decades: that everyone gets a trophy – equal outcomes for inequitable pe…
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…materials, the Texas Education Agency is now scrambling to complete its end-of-chapter tests, which are based on the new standards. Since the vote, church and state watchdog groups have been contemplating their next step. In the meantime, the Texas American Civil Liberties Union and other civil liberties organizations are urging members to contact publishers asking them to not kowtow to the new standards. Additionally, congressional redistricting…
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…that mass deportations are an “inhuman policy” that “destroys families and communities.” Tobin also accompanied an immigrant threatened with deportation by I.C.E. to a court date, and stated that “we are here today to bear witness and to appeal to the conscience of our nation to spare this man, and countless others like him, whose only offense was to seek a better life for his family.” Bishop Robert MacElroy of San Diego described the travel ban a…
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…ng human connection when we do reach out, and AI fails to provide that soul-to-soul contact. Jewish authorities accept writing as a viable mode of transmission rather than lose knowledge to the inconsistencies of human memory. Yet even while accepting this technological shift, they make sure to place value on the human transmission that’s being at least partially replaced by this change. We can negotiate a non-apocalyptic future of living with AI…
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…ve in something, whether it’s the 19th century variety or the American left-of-center variety. But it doesn’t seek to impose a particular belief on society at large. And that’s in some ways held against it by those who want society to be overtly Christian, or kick the Muslims out. Can you say something about the new culture wars, or kulturkampf, in Europe now—about multiculturalism versus the defenders of “enlightenment values”? The difference is…
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…ts has made its orthodoxy an issue. What will come of this ideological push-me-pull-you remains to be seen, not just in this election cycle but in coming decades. Which brings me back to Tertullian. It often appeared as if the rigorist perspective he represented was winning, though ultimately it did not. And while it may be tempting for those on the political left to hope for an ever-more absurdist brand of Republicanity as an easier heresy to def…
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…udio of which is played, a buzz and a moaning, a shifting register of agony-to-ecstasy in the voice of the man being pierced. The tattoo artist speculates, for the show, that McLemore experienced “an endorphin high,” “a pain fix,” from these moments of “church.” Reed calls it “an elaborate form of cutting.” Aja Romano, writing for Vox, describes the podcast’s handling of his facet of McLemore’s life as exploitative, reading the link posited by Ree…
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