Religion Dispatches
…he hands of the enemy?” Moore, who graduated from West Point and served in Vietnam, is fond of reiterating the he has sworn to uphold Constitution against enemies, both foreign and domestic. He readily agreed that America has been overtaken by enemies within. “Our government is infiltrated with communists, we’ve got Muslims coming in and taking over where we should be having the say about our principles.” And more: “I’m not so sure some in governm…
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…ore important truth. Yet the similarity of such lies should call more than the liars into question. One of the great chroniclers of war, belief, memory, and the deceptions fostered by each, Tim O’Brien (the author of classic Vietnam story collection The Things They Carried), once wrote, “You can tell a true war story by the way it never seems to end.” If we continue to participate in the lie that war is sacred, our national war story never will….
Read More…that regulated them from directly telling him negative things,” she said. Vietnamese mother-son activists Lily Dinh and Teddy Nguyen say family attitudes in Vietnam have changed since the government decriminalised same-sex marriage. In 2013, Vietnamese government officials organized discussions on same-sex marriage, and invited Dinh – who heads a small chapter of PFLAG, a group for parents and friends of LGBT people – to speak, along with others…
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…ince historians of the period, to Sasse’s dismay, have focused more on the Vietnam War and Civil Rights Movement than on religion. But as Sasse’s narrative proceeds, it becomes clear that despite failing to amend the Constitution to permit mandatory school prayer (an effort Newt Gingrich half-heartedly resurrected in the 1990s) Becker emerges as the courageous, if unsophisticated, defender of Sasse’s pious, patriotic multitudes. Becker repeatedly…
Read More…s for moving too fast, and supporting Mutually Assured Destruction and the Vietnam War. Most people these days look to Juergen Moltmann (even he’s kind of old-school by now), Gustavo Gutierrez, Marcus Borg, James Cone, Sallie McFague, or any number of other thinkers and theologians that Douthat does not recognize. The only people who want to bring back Niebuhr are conservatives. (I’m an admitted fanboy, but that’s about coming from the same church…
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…before deciding to try it again. Hence the gap between our intervention in Vietnam and nation-building in Iraq. But what about the places where total war becomes the norm? In the first half of the twentieth century, countries like Russia and Germany, and the lands in between them, initiated or suffered extremes of war that few countries have thankfully ever experienced, or could conceive of. Iraq might be able to. Just review the last one hundred…
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…in Ali’s famously defiant line about the draft and his refusal to fight in Vietnam: “No Vietcong ever called me a n—-r.” Sociologist Harry Edwards referred to Muhammad Ali as the “patron saint” of black athletic revolt. Indeed, Ali’s religiously-inspired sociopolitical stance had interfaith resonance. He was an inspiration, for example, to African-American Christian athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith, who famously bowed their heads and raised t…
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…bies, but when those children came of age, it was straight into Woodstock, Vietnam War protests and “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” Sometime in the mid-to-late 1960s, worship attendance quietly peaked. The pendulum had reached the limit of its swing. As it has continued to swing back past the center and beyond, pastors like me puzzle over how to reach spiritual-but-not-religious millennials. Some colleagues—even gifted communicators—have wearied of…
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…right to compromise with sin.” “We cannot and will not remain silent when promoted sin is corrupting the human soul and body,” the bishop wrote, saying it was especially inappropriate for the event to take place during Lent. The bishop also emphasized “that we do not bless our faithful to take part in any protests” and urged against temptation “to aggression or condemnation of others.” (English via Google translate) Event organizers released a st…
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…ith the powerful. Despite how obvious it is that the emptied coffers after Vietnam, the disastrous slashing of the social safety net in the 1980s, the protracted legitimation crisis in American democracy, and the failure attend to the still crippling forces of racism, inequality, and political apathy are the big stories in this America, LaHaye’s fact-fictional writing constituted a kind of archive deflecting attention from these issues, instead gi…
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