Religion Dispatches
…s, lemons, limes, and cotton, Muslims also introduced… pasta. Yeah, pasta. Bet you didn’t see that one coming. Given the connection between pasta, pizza and sex, that’s a major You’re Welcome. I mean, can you imagine Italian food without pasta? Can you imagine America without Italian food? Yes, Lindsey Graham, unfortunately it’s true. Even Al Capone was our fault. Or Al-Capone, at least, who may or may not have been the same person. We lost track…
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…are official, though, is the fact that he has defended false equivalencies between pedophilia and homosexuality as nothing more than harmless “Christian beliefs regarding proper sexual ethics.” Crucially, Price also denounced the Obama administration’s landmark support for transgender students as an “absurd” and “clear invasion of privacy.” If Price can’t acknowledge that a transgender girl should be able to use the ladies’ room like all her girlf…
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…ter assisted in planning a public health campaign, which many believed was promoting abstinence. (It was eventually cancelled after sexual educators stirred up a ruckus). But you really can’t beat visiting the Vatican when it comes to proving your allegiance to Catholicism. Current PAN President Felipe Calderón attended Pope John Paul II’s beatification this spring. And the PRI’s probable 2012 presidential candidate has also publicly traveled to t…
Read More…hat they’re used to. But there’s a lot more happening here. I’m willing to bet that there’s something more sinister at work. The truth is, this video wasn’t made for my eyes—the tech-savvy, Google-happy, myth-busting Gen X-er who doesn’t trust the system. It was made for my Great Aunt. And for that matter, everybody else’s Great Aunt. So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised when I’m typing away at the computer and I hear a Grandmother in the Senior Adul…
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…cks the coalition-building skills that a certain bending of the truth can abet. He is willing to insult those whose support might help him actually gain power. The link between politics and politeness—both of which draw on artifice to smooth over conflict—is one he both understands and repudiates. As suicidal as it has proven to be, his refusal to change his behavior to appear more “presidential” has a certain integrity to it, which his supporters…
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…k. This time, in late 2008, it is Catholic Does Not Equal the Vatican. You bet it doesn’t. In just 142 pages, six chapters, with not a wasted word, Ruether lays out once again her critique of ecclesial patriarchy as life-denying and institution-killing. “When I open her books,” writes Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, president of the Chicago Theological Seminary, in the foreword to the new book, “a force of mind and heart comes out that simply will no…
Read More…l, and hard work. With just enough walk-shoveling. That was always a risky bet for a wonky Yankee Mormon. And evidence suggests that it hasn’t worked: evangelical Christians are consolidating behind Rick Santorum. Had Romney not spent the entire first part of his candidacy trying to pass himself off as a regular Christian conservative, he might be in a position to state the obvious: to take the Republican party by the shoulders and make the case t…
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…alking about the rest of us.) As far as students go, they need to practice noticing and talking about the skills and habits they’re getting in religious studies. They’ll have to articulate these things to their parents and prospective employers. I bet they can do it better than I have. When they do, they’ll be a lot more ready to take over the world, and that will be a good thing. This essay is based on a talk given to Brown University undergradua…
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…not entirely a bad thing. Keeping the church alive might be the only thing between some people and the bottom falling out of their society. But if you know the politics of that same area, you know how dark the shadow side of that same instinct can be. When “the way things used to be” involves poisonous racial resentment, the desire to preserve tradition becomes corrupted. Traditionalism isn’t in itself bad, but it can promote social rigidity just…
Read More…m said: To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case? This view is frequently thought of as emanating from evangelical organizations like WallBuilders or the classrooms at Liberty University. But Santorum had a Catholic mentor, if not for the precise physical reaction, for the ove…
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