Religion Dispatches
…Altis of Olympia in 1936, then carried overland by runners from Greece to Germany (the event in Leni Reifenstahl’s famous film, Olympia). Coubertin, for whom Berlin was to be the last Olympiad, loved the idea. It captured much of what he was after with his revival. But after the war that followed so tragically and so soon, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) needed to detach the flame from its historical origins if they wanted to maintain i…
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…t her go. What I remember most from growing up during the Cold War in West Germany is how it felt to have “No Future” because the US and Russia had overwhelming arsenals of atomic warheads pointed at each other. From my point of view, the world seems safer now in some ways, and so much less safe in others. Still, it is we who must make some decisions about how we deal with such a heightened level of anxiety. Authoritarian forces in governments all…
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…to reignite the culture wars in the name of religious liberty. In a video promoting the Declaration, Colson likened contemporary America to Nazi Germany, and “elites” and “intellectuals” to Hitler. For decades, PFM has placed its volunteers inside prison walls to minister directly to inmates. In addition to questions about the programs’ effectiveness, such partnerships with state institutions have drawn legal challenges. InnerChange, a PFM progra…
Read More…ating the common good in society. Beck was moved by Greer’s rather moderate statement to respond, on his Premier Radio Networks show, thusly: This leads to death camps. A Jew, of all people, should know that. This is exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany. Put humankind and the common good first. This is one of those statements—and Beck is one of those figures—that only comedy can confront. It doesn’t exist on the plane of…
Read More…nation in films of racist hate rallies, whether in anti-Semitic rallies in Germany in the 1930s, in Alabama in the 1960s, or in Yorba Linda this February. What kind of “cooperation” does King want? In reporting instances of planned violence, Muslims have been not just cooperative, but proactive. The Nigerian would-be airplane bomber was reported by his own father. The attempted Times Square bomber was first identified by a Muslim street vendor. Wo…
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…0 people in the Facebook group “Chilean Miners,” for instance (people from Germany, Ireland, Argentina, Canada, Ohio, Wyoming, and so on) were watching the live feed from the mine in their homes, workplaces, cafes and other distributed locales, but praying together for the miners, sharing news from their parts of the world, and, in general, witnessing and ministering to one another throughout the day. It’s hard to tell where all this might lead. P…
Read More…ter battle over health care reform, Colson compared our government to Nazi Germany and fretted about “totalitarianism” and “tyranny.” Not just uncivil, but actually plainly false and absolutely incendiary. When religious right figures released the Manhattan Declaration in November 2009, Colson, one of the document’s first enthusiastic signers, urged people not only to sign it, but to read Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, which he called…
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…me and Constantinople, expanding the Holy Roman Empire (then just parts of Germany and Italy) to recreate the vast unified realm of the Caesars. Otto and Gerbert brought two of the scourges of Europe—the Vikings in the north and the Hungarian Magyars in the east—into the Christian fold. They established the Polish Catholic Church and sent missionaries to the Prussians, Swedes, and other pagan tribes; they strengthened the empire’s ties with Spain…
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…know from discussing the topic with former Mormons from England, Belgium, Germany, and South Africa, the rupture can be harrowing even for people who have never set foot in Utah and are one of only a handful of Latter-day Saints in their community. In The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi states, “Changing moral codes is always costly; all heretics, apostates, and dissidents know this.” Mormons who leave the church face dire consequences: damnati…
Read More…ared and demonized him as an atheist, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, communism-promoting, one-world order-creating, evil mastermind of the progressive movement (even though he himself is a foe of communism and anti-Semitism). He’s wealthy; he’s a philanthropist for justice causes; he’s a Jew; he’s therefore the scapegoat, whether conservatives invoke tropes about wealthy Jews or their secret control of money or an imaginary one-world order; or as Beck…
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