Religion Dispatches
…gleaming behind thick glass frames. There was something in this face that knew, knew something most of us simply haven’t lived nearly long enough to get to. “How would you counsel future generations to be a part of their country?” he was asked. His reply was instantaneous, and even lovelier for being so. Everybody learns from life what’s going on. And if they pay attention to everything that people do, especially helping people, that’s one big thi…
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…reminders of what’s at stake may be necessary as (ex)CrossFitters forge a new republic of fitness. In Reforging the White Republic, Edward Blum recounts the history of Northern white Protestants abandoning their racial justice commitments to ally with white southerners after the Civil War. This example of white abolitionists opting for white comfort and unity over the trials of continued abolitionist work attests to the tenacity of white cultural…
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…e led a clandestine salon with a group of Hasidic Jews in a hipster bar in New York’s SoHo neighborhood; conversed with high school students in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil; and convened a series of workshops with the Mohawk Council of Akwesanse on the US/Canadian border. These journeys were originally inspired by a series of conversations he had in a language exchange group while he was working on his Arabic skills in Cairo. Over time, Fraenkel’s de…
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…ting Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Serbs, swept the election and formed the new seven-member presidency. The dream of Bosnia as a multicultural, multiethnic model of tolerance and coexistence for the rest of Yugoslavia—and Europe—had started to unravel. On June 25, 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia. A brief military intervention in Slovenia and a full-scale war in Croatia quickly unfolded. The military campaign was in…
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…was not enough. 1923. Year Zero, or a fresh start, depending on your take. New dress. New calendar. New mode of government. Ataturk even gave the new, secular republic a new script, ditching Arabic for utilitarian Latin, then erasing as much evidence of Persian and Arabic as he could. Going through the dictionary with a black highlighter. Even snipping out subversive letters. There is, for example, no ‘q’. But there would be, if he’d faithfully t…
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…are legion: the New International Version (NIV) was published in 1978, the New King James Version (NKJV) in 1979, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJV) in 1985, and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) in 1989. There is even a periodical version published in the teen magazines, “Revolve” and “Refuel,” called the New Century Bible (NCV), a version popular among evangelical publishing houses and intended to translate “thought for thought rather than word…
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…ubmitted the manuscript, my editor, Jennifer Hammer, and her colleagues at New York University Press, encouraged me to go with a title that emphasized the dynamic change the leaders and members wanted to effect, so we settled on New World A-Coming. How do you feel about the cover? I’m very happy with the cover, which features a mural by Charles White with major figures from African American history. Is there a book out there you wish you had writt…
Read More…reotypes. Finally, Obama is grievously out of line for violating the tacit code of silence that plagues our country on issues of race, racism, and slavery. Many believe that it is politically incorrect to talk publicly about America’s perennial sins (both past and present) or to speak of America as anything but “the promised land,” or the fabled “City upon a Hill.” This includes bringing up any of America’s contradictions, such as the construction…
Read More…on 377, that criminalizes sex between men in India, the ruling was welcome news. And it has renewed some hope for the repeal of other repressive laws, including one requiring the “registration and control of eunuchs” and marital rape exceptions in the Indian Penal Code. … Depictions of gender-fluid identity are common in ancient texts found in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. In Hinduism, gods transform into goddesses, or they cross-dress. Men beco…
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…and in Bombay when Arun Gandhi and his supporters staged a protest. Thus a news story that did not get wide coverage in the American print media (the New York Times chose not to cover the story) made headlines in India—in today’s media world, it seems, there are no more “backpage stories.” Exactly a month after his resignation from the institute, Arun Gandhi and his son Tushar Gandhi attempted to organize a protest in Bombay. Unlike the Calcutta T…
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