Religion Dispatches
…it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, the idea, hang on, am I advising people to leave their church… yes!… If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish.” And the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good responded. Beck needs to get out more. I don’t know about the Book of Mormon, but here are just a few of the Bible verses concerning the poor and believer’s…
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…st occasionally plunks out notes on a tiny toy piano; Georg Hólm sometimes uses a drumstick instead of a pick on the strings of his electric bass to bang out a rhythm that sounds like Morse code. When all twelve performers are on stage, the sounds that they make together are nothing less than astonishing. On top of it all rests the falsetto voice of the band’s vocalist, Jón Birgisson, who sings the lyrics with a keening wail: Bakvio sk´yjaból vakn…
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…of the Nazi assaults on the German trans community. The new playbooks also use the same narratives the Christian Right used on gay people in the past, the same made-up logic about transness or gayness as a “social contagion.” Because gay or trans people can’t reproduce, their lie goes, they have to “indoctrinate” children with their “perversion.” Framing a marginalized group as predators accomplishes two things: it demonizes them while also portra…
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…l’s frustration with people who might use “spiritual but not religious” as code for “I don’t really think about religion at all because it’s boring or difficult or irrelevant to my pursuit of self-interest.” One statistician of religion suggests that America is well on its way to becoming a nation of “310 million people with 310 million religions,” each tailor-made to suit themselves. As someone who has made a career out of the life of the mind, a…
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…ld” by her father to the groom. The Modern Orthodox protesters’ cause in Beit Shemesh is legitimate. Their critique should not, however, be limited to the egregious acts of the haredim, but to the injustices embedded in the very religious system they live by and defend. Schoolgirls should dress according to dress codes dictated by their parents and their schools. People should pray using any liturgy they want, and get married by the rabbi…
Read More…slavery.) And what about secret paganistic societies with odd behind-closed-doors rituals? That too is classic Americana—just as American as the Freemasons. What really breaks the good Christian folks code of conduct is not engaging in questionable behavior but rather exposing the indiscretions of other good Christian folks, especially after they get established and powerful….
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…i-nu (尤美女) that would neutralize the gender-based Article 972 of the Civil Code, which stipulates that a marriage is an agreement between a man and a woman. Yu’s amendment would remove the “man and woman” provision from the article and recognize marriage as an agreement between “two parties,” a contentious point between supporters and opponents of the marriage equality legislation. However, to reduce opposition to the legislation, DPP Legislator J…
Read More…about a brokered convention, and being willing to serve. These are merely code words to try to rally her flagging base of supporters to give money to SarahPac. To push back on the HBO movie, SarahPac commissioned a video, “Game change we can believe in,” a highlight reel of Palin on the 2008 campaign trail. Of course, the Pac is fundraising on the movie, hoping to get $20.12 for the 2012 race. While Rick Santorum has taken Palin’s 2008 role over…
Read More…honor killing; the report was deemed worthy 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…
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…as partly because of Cantor’s effort to grasp the infinite, and partly because he was ridiculed by so many mathematicians who refused to try. Supercomputers might let researchers expand our understanding of pi. But even then, the task is endless. When people search for pi, they search for the infinite. They’ll never reach it, as long as they’re finite beings with finite imaginations. But there’s some wonder that comes with trying. Some satisfactio…
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