Religion Dispatches
…ir husbands. These organizations all promote literature, lectures, conferences, and other materials intended to promote this perspective, as well as the starkly delineated gender norms and expectations upon which this view is based. I’d be willing to bet the t-shirt will be showing up at homeschool conventions across the country this spring….
Read More…ide among homosexuals is evidence of how unhealthy it is to be one. “Homosexual/bi-sexual individuals are seven times to contemplate or commit suicide,” he said, and then in a taunting tone, added “Oooh, that doesn’t sound very healthy.” All without a shred of empathy or recognition that the suicides are a result of how people like him treat gays and lesbians. I’ve written about the Reconstructionist influence on Barton’s views on race and slavery…
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…fect on our everyday approach to the Bible’s stories? Will play with the text in the form of a game make us more likely to see the biblical text itself as a game, or at least as alterable? Of course, Jewish interpreters have been reading the Bible this way for thousands of years. Midrash itself is a sort of biblical play and can be both enjoyable and theologically profound. But fundamentalists of all monotheist stripes are much less enamored of in…
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…more likely there will be press following Pakistani artists around—but thousands and thousands of people attend concerts in Kuala Lampur, and there is already a Malaysian scene for “Western” music, you’ll find Malay skinheads, punks, metalheads, and rappers. Pakistan is mostly a place for ballads, and bhangra. Q: Assuming international impact, are we seeing transnational connections being made? For example, the UK Asian Underground, the US/Indian…
Read More…ns them the place better than others who make different choices. So, it is better for not better than. I mean, do what makes you better for yourself, but do not confuse it with something that makes you better than another self; which is istikbar. The story of Satan goes like this: when the prototype (or first) human, Adam, was created out of an atom of dust (tin, pronounced “teen”) the unseen creatures were ordered to bow to him. There was a reaso…
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…ted workers. Both in word and in deed the candidates stoked the flames of extreme xenophobia and racism, denouncing Mexicans as criminally prone, culturally inferior, and downright un-American. As a result, Angle was narrowly defeated by the more moderate Harry Reid, whilst Brewer went on to beat her opponent handily. The basis of Brewer’s popularity is her signature, SB 1070, the most severe anti-immigrant law in the nation. But rather than an ab…
Read More…song. Two of these got plenty of play on major cable networks like MTV and BET; but very few people have seen the third video. In the song, Kanye seems to embrace personal spirituality (i.e., “the way I need Jesus”) over against an explicitly racial theology (i.e. “I ain’t here to argue about his facial features”), while insisting that Jesus walks with “the least of these”—namely, “strippers, murderers, drug dealers.” We might consider the song a…
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…religious complex will get more interesting .It is not the religious complex that is complex, rather, the existence of Zoe and Tamara offer more interesting questions about what composes one’s personal “essence” In other words, what is it that makes you, you? And if a dog, in this case, Zoe’s dog, can recognize Zoe, what is it then that makes her dog be able to see her, even through all of the metal her essence is encased in? I know Dog is GOD spe…
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…re left with an even bigger problem than before: Who made this ultra-complex God? A hyper-complex megaGod? It makes plain sense, according to Occam’s razor, to stop before we get to the first God. The complex universe is enough. Ergo, in all likelihood, God does not exist. This argument, which boils down to Well, who made God, then?, assumes that God is a thing like any other thing. It assumes that God must exist in the same way the moon exists, i…
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…l world with adolescence hints at this as a kind of rite of passage—a time betwixt and between childhood and full adult responsibilities. Much like game worlds, it occurs within a space where actions have been stripped of real-world consequences, though from the first, we discover that Zoe has discovered ways to make what happens in this space count: she’s turned to it as a space of religious conversion and political activism. One of the recurring…
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