Religion Dispatches
…ed States was the ability to develop our own identity. I was brought up an Indian Muslim. There were so few of us Indians in the U.S. then that if you saw a woman in a sari on the other end of the shopping mall, you went running over to introduce yourself and, a day or two later, your whole families were having tandoori chicken picnics together. I was about 8 or 9 when I discovered that Hindus and Muslims were not divisions of the same religion. I…
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…d religion in American history. By focusing on Afro-Creole Spiritualism in New Orleans, we get an extended, as well as intimate, look at how one very particular group, mostly men and free people of color, envisioned their ideal society through the voices of spirit mediums. In doing so, they drew from French thinkers and historical experiences (including everyone from Rousseau, Robespierre, and Lamennais to the French and Haitian Revolutions), and…
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…e requires some creativity and thoughtfulness; marking the appearance of a new decade, or a new century, proves to be far more challenging than remembering to change the year on the checks and Thank You notes I write in January. This time around, there’s no escaping the fact that our collective feet are now planted firmly in the twenty-first century. And it is worth reflecting on what this dawning perspective (of seeing ourselves as twenty-first…
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…erving as Chaplain and Technology Integrator at St. Thomas’s Day School in New Haven. Safy-Hallan Farah, an editor in Minnesota, was raised Muslim and currently identifies as Muslim. But, she said, “I don’t necessarily subscribe to every tenet of the faith. I would say I’m all over the place and very much a passive believer.” Farah said she was a huge Dawkins fan when she considered herself an atheist in her late teens, but she found the New Athei…
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…e and Stop Losing Elections” (video here). While his proposal is not brand new, it is perhaps new to most progressives who have in recent decades bought into the model of the high wall of separation between religion and secular public life. He is impatient with the place, or really lack of place, accorded religion in American democratic life, especially among self-identified progressives. Ledewitz is onto something in his intuition that the metaph…
Read More…school policy and the American Counseling Association code of ethics. That code, by the way, is clear about what is expected from counselors: Counselors do not condone or engage in discrimination based on age, culture, disability, ethnicity, race, religion/spirituality, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status/partnership, language preference, socioeconomic status, or any basis proscribed by law. Counselors do not discriminate a…
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…ions in Russia Spark Outrage as the Country Takes a Conservative Turn,” AP News, October 27, 2023. [35] Team, “New Year Address to the Nation.” [36] For the quote, see Team, “New Year Address to the Nation.” According to the 2021 Russian census, there are 193 different ethnic groups residing on the territory of Russia, with nearly 72 percent of the population identifying as ethnic Russians. [37] According to the 2021 census, Russian total populati…
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…013 may go down in history, as the day Americans lost their most important freedom—their freedom of conscience.” Among Lyons’ critics (like David Sessions* in post titled “you’ve got to be kidding, Gabe Lyons”) were evangelicals like Andrew Marin. But, unlike Lyons, Marin’s not exactly a member of what might be termed the “new” evangelical elite, and the evangelical ethicist David Gushee provides some insight as to why. In discussing the Giglio i…
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…ts to block spiritual evolution because it threatens their control. What’s new is the emphasis on child trafficking. Angeli seems to sit at the intersection where QAnon meets New Age spirituality. They share themes of awakening from a sleep in which the “sheeple” still dwell. This Great Awakening map depicts many of the points of convergence. The crossover of spirituality with conspiracy theories has been labelled conspirituality, and there are so…
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…e development of new and more complex intellectual and spiritual horizons, new forms of shared awareness. The Pope’s new embrace of digital space as a site for the meaningful expansion and enrichment of social, intellectual, and spiritual relatedness in which the faithful should engage is welcome. But, as Ritchie pointed out in his blog, the Pope’s letter errs in assuming that digital media are the particular provenance of the young. While it’s tr…
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