Religion Dispatches
…between my Catholic friend and the enthusiastic Theosophist sums up why I feel uncomfortable on airplanes. I don’t want to run into true believers. I don’t mind telling someone I study religion. But it’s very different then to tell someone I study their religion. It just seems impolite. Like saying I study their grandmother’s recipes. As I learned in college, religious studies is predicated on a notion of bracketing. “When we study religion acade…
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…behind the fractured constructions of reality that provide us with the day-to-day world around us. The book that makes the best connection between religion and the social construction of reality is likely The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Social Theory of Religion. His regard for religion as a cultural resource for thinking of ultimate matters led him to become a well-known defender of religion. His prominence as a champion for God rose during the…
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…ciple of the state—Jewish safety was. Porat’s treatment has a tragic matter-of-factness to it: the violence that Jews experienced cannot be undone, but naive utopianism can be. That understanding may be why the recent Israeli elections shocked American Jews more than Israelis. Kahanists came into power who are toying with West Bank annexation, deporting Palestinian citizens of Israel, and banning non-Orthodox converts from the Law of Return. From…
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…mplacent about the injustice of inequality. The conventional wisdom is not free-market fundamentalism, but a belief that the market can be tamed, made to serve the common good. It wants wealth to spread, but it lacks urgency, passion; it trusts that the status quo is gradually delivering progress. (What would be the alternative to such trust but guilt and despair?) The conventional wisdom therefore entails a strong dose of fatalism. It accepts as…
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…a clangorous jeremiad against noise pollution when I opened this marvelous new book; I was delighted to have that expectation upended. Yes, there is plenty of passion and outrage—expressed at an appropriately modulated pitch—from time to time. But there is more of gentleness and good humor and old-fashioned deep humanism. This is a book to read carefully for its many subtleties and aperçus, as when Keizer observes how the English word “volume” ref…
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…tural creator that is ‘appropriate for us to worship’.” Against this lowest-common-denominator definition of God, Dawkins offers his own take a few pages later: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.” To argue against that conception of God without acknowledging that Dawkins talks about a “fictional character” is equivalent to making a category mistake. 1:0 for Dawkins. And Copan doesn’t quite recov…
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…Former Director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights Craig Mokhiber’s letter in response to the UN’s failure to protect Palestinians’ lives and human rights, Mokhiber described Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank as “a text-book case of genocide.” [7] Trevor Hunnicutt and Steve Holland, “At U.N., Biden promises ‘relentless diplomacy,’ not Cold War,” Reuters, September 21, 2021. Biden referred to the…
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…l Christian thought into a Sweet Valley High-inspired, one-dimensional-U.S.-high-school pastiche, it would be like we had: Mrs. Ernestine Peck, the lady who directs the morning bus traffic. She is wealthy enough that she doesn’t need the income, but she does this out of the goodness of her heart because she thinks kids today—with their fancy phones and their Facespace-or-whatever-it’s-called—need to see someone like her. Maybe it will inspire them…
Read More…r and defeated. They have come upon him just in time to witness his suicide-by-explosion, an option he offers them as well: “It’s better this way. No pain, an end to sorrow, grief, regret, everything. You know what’s out there. A short, brutal life and an agonizing death. There is no hope. Wouldn’t it be kinder, more compassionate to just hold your loved one and wait for the clock to run down?” One of the group challenges Jenner: “My daughter does…
Read More…science textbooks, which had been scheduled for this spring. Lacking new up-to-date textbooks, school districts may instead use supplemental materials. Outgoing board member and young earth creationist Don McLeroy said last year that the provision allowing supplemental materials is one of his proudest achievements. Meanwhile, in Louisiana, creationists, led by members of the fundamentalist Christian organization Louisiana Family Forum, have lost t…
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