Religion Dispatches
…bama is depicted as a crafty beguiler of mass audiences; he emerges from a plane out of the heavens as thousands swoon, cry, and cheer. He’s smug and self-congratulatory as he misleads his admirers with lofty promises. He was “charismatic,” a “knight in shining armor,” he “really did seem to have a glow about him,” and to be “the one,” former Obama supporters tell us. The followers are giddy from the cult-like deception. A still from the opening…
Read More…id Jihad at the airport. Can’t yell for him. #MuslimRage —Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) September 18, 2012 Gawker shares chilling images of #muslimrage from AP.gaw.kr/OxBFcu —benwedeman (@bencnn) September 18, 2012 On a plane and people mishearing me when I say I am a *tourist*. #muslimrage —Welshy(@WelshInGaza) September 17, 2012 And don’t miss Paul Waldman and Gabe Arana’s terrific parody of Newsweek’s journalistic decline….
Read More…vention is still at the woodshed, or riding in the cargo hold of Ryan’s VP plane. Eastwood was a reminder of the very racial animus in the campaign that the Republican Party is working hard to make us forget. And while we saw a parade of women and people of color on the platform, down on the convention floor, peanuts were thrown at a black camerawoman Patricia Carroll, with the unnamed perpetrators shouting: “that’s how we feed the animals.” Inci…
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…mething like an invisible hand, deferred to the Big Bang or some alternate plane of existence. Second, “myths” brings us back to South Korean amusement parks. They remind us that there is much more to culture than cold hard facts. (Otherwise, how could we have Fox News?) The popularity of a myth like creationism depends on social dynamics, publicity, and specific institutions of power. To combat it, evolution needs more than just the hard facts. I…
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…tokrator sustaining the world and raising or exalting humanity to a higher plane, rather than descending into suffering and death among utterly corrupted humans. A few years back Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker did a stunning job of exposing the importance of this tradition, soteriologically speaking, in Saving Paradise. Tony Jones is not quite ready to take the Eastern view, let alone the Tillichian view that there is ultimately no conflict at all…
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…that people in the West hear so much about. To use a crude analogy: if one plane crashes in a day, it’s of course big news. Ninety-nine planes don’t and they don’t make the news. The episodes of mass peaceful protest within the Muslim world for the most part have not made the news, with the exception of what’s happened over the past six or eight months. Do you think the Arab Spring is changing this negative perception of Islam? Now, if you talk…
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…s say you run into someone on the street, or have a seat by someone on the plane, and they say: “You know, I’ve always believed that…,” and they tell you what they believe. “It’s what I grew up with.” Maybe, “I’ve even been involved in activism. But I’m having doubts, and I really am afraid of what might happen if I look at those doubts too closely. Do you have advice for me?” Well, I would say that it would be important to find a circle of peopl…
Read More…ight, but we can’t take a book of supplications in Arabic to recite on the plane. We can drive our minivans on near-perfect roads to the local public library that is inevitably to be found even if we’re in the middle of nowhere, but we can’t talk about matters of juristic interest related to certain aspects of bodily purification in public. We miss the mundane – stopping at the roadside for quick (meat-based) meals – without asking about the bacon…
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…marketing, particularly via the Web rather than the printing press—and via plane rather than donkey—have come to define their evangelism. McLaren’s church has no building and no walls, but Warren’s puts the mega in church. Everything is outsized; one of Jakes’ successful festivals was called “MegaFest.” McLaren is a bit of the odd man out here, as a leading figure in the freewheeling, text-questioning emergent church movement, rather than the self…
Read More…he Hutaree, who were turned in by a Muslim, and Joseph Stack, who flew his plane into a federal office building. I suppose Brennan’s caveat about those charged with “terrorism” is his “out,” but it seems like a technicality. The National Security Strategy makes no such qualifications, arguing that “Several recent incidences of violent extremists in the United States who are committed to fighting here and abroad have underscored the threat to the U…
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