Religion Dispatches
…mockery he has now attracted, this relatively obscure congressman whom I’d bet half the pundits discussing his fate today had barely heard of before his primary win, is a National Superstar, the very embodiment of the Christian Right’s all-too-often abandoned determination to stand up to GOP pols who forever pay them lip service but rarely deliver the goods. […] And if he does win, he will enter the Senate next year not as some random wingnut dude…
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…long been interested in the myth of the loyal canine who knows his master better than any human can. This notion of devotion and intuition is built into the sentimental process which transformed dogs from work animals into family pets. (For more on this, see my essay on Lassie in The Wow Climax) Of course, my ever practical wife suggests another explanation—that Zoe has been playing with the dog in her search for human contact and so he turns to…
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…ing to look like?” when it comes to Taqwacore. I can’t tell the future any better than Basim or Shahj can really judge how many people are actually fans of the book and their music. Q: The virtual aspect of Taqwacore allows for greater international access to the music and discussion of TQ bands. Do you believe that TQ is having an impact outside of the United States? If so, what? Why do you think it is having an appeal? If not, why? Is it the mus…
Read More…pride in our great nation.” Learn Our History’s messages are all geared to promoting the idea of American Exceptionalism, and from the clips, they appear to be delivered with all the subtlety and Cold War fervor of the movie Red Dawn. From Learn Our History web site’s Frequently Asked Questions: What does it mean that Learn Our History is “unbiased”? Learn Our History’s products have been developed to correct the “blame America first” attitude pre…
Read MoreWhat better way to rescue a floundering Republican primary campaign than to tap the adopter of the term “Christocrat” to lead your effort? Newt Gingrich has selected former Senator Zell Miller to be the co-chair of his presidential campaign. Miller, a Democrat, infamously spoke to the 2004 Republican National Convention and charged that John Kerry would arm the military with spitballs. But that’s not Miller’s only claim to fame. Earlier in 2004,…
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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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…n has more embryos than can be transferred, doctors pick the two best, and freeze the remaining embryos for later use. However, the sad fact is that about half of the embryos which are cryopreserved won’t even survive the freezing and thawing process. We take healthy embryos and subject them to a process which offers no direct medical benefit to them, knowing that 50% of them will die in the process. Just imagine the parallel to healthy newborns:…
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…s the category of “religion.” RFI’s slogan is “Working to Secure Religious Freedom for Everyone, Everywhere.” But, in practice, they seem intent on challenging the freedom of minority religious groups like The Satanic Temple. They conceal this paradox by labeling religions they don’t like as “anti-religion forces.” According to RFI: “To say The Satanic Temple, which rejects God and hates religion, is a religion is to render as nonsense one of the…
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…ry national poll—and in recent battleground state polls—a two-way election between Trump and Joe Biden is a tossup.* In PRRI’s recent American Values Survey, conducted in partnership with the Brookings Institution, nearly all voters who supported Trump in 2020 (94%) said they planned to support him in 2024. More than three-quarters of White evangelicals—along with nearly six in ten of both White non-evangelical/mainline Protestants (57%) and White…
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…incere belief that coexistence was possible. Peace Now, founded in 1978 to promote a genuine and just peace between Israel and Palestine, was a real, forceful movement in the 1980s, with some political power. No more. In fact, it is today’s protest movement, a mostly centrist movement, which has taught us that Israel has transformed into a more ethnocentric, illiberal, even autocratic, right-wing society. Many are against this, but the mere fact t…
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