Religion Dispatches
…would provide “Biblical guidance to your everyday ups and downs.” With it, users select from a scrolling list of “blessings” (friendship, new home) or “burdens” (anger, money), shake the phone, and get a Bible verse to guide reflection in the course of daily life. What is cool about apps like the Holy Roller is not, however, just what they contain and how that has been selected, but where they go and what comes back. That is, a user of the Holy Ro…
Read More
…includes a mass exodus of Puerto Ricans to the mainland) as “so many Fake News stories today….The Fake News Media is out of control!” Faith in Begnaud’s broadcasts—whether fact-checking that, indeed, there was no truck driver strike or documenting how locals in Guayanillas are working to reconnect old pipes to supply water to their communities or providing an update on the bacterial infection Leptospirosis as the probable cause of several recent…
Read More
…s “confirmed fabrications” deepens. In the cases of these larger-than-life newsmen the factual infidelity had been allowed to persist for years despite those reporters and members of the military who knew the truth. None of this should come as a surprise to those who have an understanding of the power of narrative over our lives. Joseph Campbell has explored this ad nauseam in his analysis of the function of myth, and in The Gulf War Did Not Take…
Read More
…de the military.) The language has been used by Pentecostal leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation, a group that sees itself creating a new church and an army of spiritual warriors who will hasten the return of Christ by taking dominion over the earth. But the Seven Mountains framework has also become a sort of lingua franca among the religious right, forming the basis for Janet Porter’s May Day rally on the mall last year as well as the Nationa…
Read More
…nts. Download a certain program, and the robot will begin to play soothing New Age music as it stretches toward the ceiling and then lowers itself, gradually but with surprising grace, into a perfect downward dog. D.A.V.I.D. may be cute, and robotic yoga may be goofy, but the intentions of SES and Dr. Kevin Staley, an associate professor of theology and the robot’s handler, could not be more serious. Through those 23 inches of silicon and plastic,…
Read More
…he wounds inflicted on so many people of color by America’s exceptionally racist history. Photo of Obama supporters in Grant park by Flickr user Erica Marshall, under a Creative Commons license….
Read More…But, with all due respect to Ecclesiastes, digital technology is something new under the sun. Laws about stealing, and lying, and loving one’s neighbor aren’t so easy to apply to issues of global connectedness and digital privacy. Back in June, writing about the NSA surveillance scandal, Daniel Schultz pointed out in Christian Century that: there has been minimal reaction by religious groups. A quick survey of eight denominations found that only o…
Read More
…w Torba. The Tree of Life Synagogue shooter was, not coincidentally, a Gab user. Under pressure, Mastriano eventually cut ties with Gab, but as a Christian nationalist gubernatorial candidate, he remains a threat to democracy. The point in adducing these examples and tracing their connections is not that most individual evangelical churches have direct ties to groups like the Proud Boys or that they provide direct support for prominent state or na…
Read More
…struggling with his own sexuality as he frequented the nightclub and was a user of gay dating apps. To many this may muddy his motives, but only if one doesn’t understand the history of jihadism. Jihadism is a particular strain of political and social reform that emerges as an anti-colonial movement in the Muslim world. In response to the threat of European hegemony, jihadism resisted violently and through that violence sought to reform the Muslim…
Read More…eir otherwise skeptical view of government. Later, on Twitter, one popular user observed, “It seems as if all you have to do to make some conservatives trust the government is shoot an unarmed black teenager.” Though I am not inclined to attribute such reactions to racism plain-and-simple, they do indicate something about how politics informs our understanding—and approval—of police violence. My understanding of the events in Ferguson has been ver…
Read More