Religion Dispatches
…hy of international coverage because the Palestinian women had broken “the code of silence” by resorting to Israeli courts. The implications of this juxtaposition of two unrelated events are that Palestinians belong to a backward, patriarchal culture that, rightly or wrongly, is under attack by a modern, “democratic” state with a legal apparatus that supports women’s rights. Others have shown that the New York Times gave disproportionate attention…
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…n of the hermaphrodite in Fellini’s Satyricon. To be sure, Bowie’s a freak—code for “fag” among the real-life Jeff Spicolis in my junior high class, righteous dudes whose idea of total radness is firing up a beer bong, dropping the needle on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, and watching The Wizard of Oz with the sound turned off. But he’s so heart-stoppingly beautiful, in such a confusingly feminine way, that he short-circuits my teenage brain,…
Read More…?) And who were similarly silent when the party tried to capitalize on the coded racism of the anti-Obama forces in 2012 or upend the Affordable Care Act, even though the Catholic Church has been advocating for universal health care since Model Ts were on the road. And it’s even funnier that those who helped put Bush and Cheney in office and watched as they led the nation into endless, unwinnable wars, and justified torture to prevent an ever-pres…
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…ayer of my persuasion (we’ll call her Petra from Yuma) finds using the tax code to benefit such schools offensive to the First Amendment. In the past, Petra from Yuma could go into court to challenge the tax credit as a form of state-subsidized religion. But Petra (or a Thomas Jefferson redivivus, for that matter) is now out of luck. The core issue is whether providing the tax credit has the exact same practical impact as simply giving tax revenue…
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…rends continue, perhaps we can look forward to the day when the word “values” is no longer used in political campaigns as a code word for bigotry….
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…ovidential success derived from the nation’s fidelity to God’s unforgiving code. It is easy to be seduced by these beliefs into some very strange conclusions. Christianity, after all, is not Judaism, and the Christian religion begins with the assumption that it is not about nation-building or Kingdom-creation anymore. The “Kingdom of God” that Jesus preached is precisely not the Kingdom of Judah; it took the disciples quite some time to get this p…
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…Mark C. Taylor: Religion can be understood as a system of symbols (creed, code, cultus) by means of which people (a community) orient themselves in the world with reference to both ordinary and extraordinary powers, meanings, and values. (Albanese) Religion, I would argue, is a complex adaptive network of myths, symbols, rituals, and concepts that simultaneously figure patterns of feeling, thinking, and acting and disrupt stable structures of mea…
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…d back in 2014, defended itself by invoking section 18 of the Human Rights code, which allows a religious group to restrict participation to the faithful. So while AA presents itself to the public as a “spiritual” program, distinguishing itself from “religious” groups, it nevertheless claimed “religious” legal status in order to protect itself. Although the definition of “religion” is generally assumed in common parlance, it is not in any sense ea…
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…can be picked off as so many inert targets in a videogame you have a cheat code for. I’m sure many Arabs and Muslims across the region watched this and thought two things: what exactly was the point of independence, if some 60 years later a country has no actual capacity to defend itself? And, given that, why is it Western powers are still rescuing Arabs or Muslims, as they see it, on their own terms? 5) Let’s not pretend that this is truly an a…
Read More…der identity (as defined in paragraph 249(c)(4) of title 18, United States Code), sexual orientation, or disability, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity funded in whole or in part with funds made available under [VAWA], and any other program or activity funded in whole or in part with funds appropriated for grants, cooperative agreements, and other assistance…
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