Religion Dispatches
…other Mormons. Together, in some of the largest wagon trains to ever cross American soil, Mormons followed the church leaders as they hopped about the Midwest, finally landing in what would later be called Utah, where they established a permanent home. It was Zion, they said. Today, the LDS church is so large that no state could contain it. Mormons, in a blessed union of tradition and technology, began to gather virtually, through blogging. “Almos…
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…t is almost invisible outside the academic world because the text is nearly 800 pages of dense, jargon-filled prose.” Rest assured, we do not need to read Taylor for ourselves because David Brooks can be trusted. His ongoing effort to distill for us the density of jargon is a choice well-honed. The result: a column that we have chosen to read (again, wisely) and, moreover, a readerly choice that becomes a sign to others and ourselves that we are a…
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…years. I came about the time that folks from Burma began arriving in large numbers and uniting in membership with Crescent Hill, and much of my time in those early years was spent trying to figure out how in the world we might be able to be a unified body that includes people who don’t speak English, who have a completely foreign background and cultural experience. It took a lot of hard work but we reached a place a number of years ago where, whil…
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…Harris. Facts are facts. Oakland-born Kamala Harris’ father is a Jamaican American Stanford professor emeritus, and her mother was an Indian American biomedical scientist. The two met and fell in love while both were involved in the civil rights movement. Since being “Indian” and “Jamaican” doesn’t describe race, she can determine from her roots that she is both Afro- and descended from an Asian woman of color—which means she’s a twofer, not simp…
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…l or fantasy football, I thought this sport could become a virtual part of American civil religion. The Holy Trinity of American Sports as Craig Forney has phrased it in his book (subtitled Civil Religion in Football, Baseball, and Basketball) are everywhere in their fantasy forms these days. Since each can each be seen as a core part of American civil or cultural religion, why not their fantasy versions? And, since dissent is a crucial aspect of…
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…ee of interest in the February 9 webinar, for which 1500 people registered, 800 of whom attended. These are very large numbers for events of this nature, and part of the reason for releasing the report at this time is to “keep public attention on Christian nationalism.” While no particular next steps are immediately planned, Tyler expresses hope “that this will be a resource for the [US House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack], and for othe…
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…seven million people. (According to the World Health Organization more than 800 people around the world have died from this flu.) Flying over Israel and taking one’s prayers a little closer to the heavens might seem like a recent rabbinic innovation, but it is not. Actually, there were a number of precedents for such prayer flights; one as early as 1942, when the Jews of British Mandatory Palestine feared that the Nazis would break through the Bri…
Read MoreCNN’s Belief Blog has a great rundown of the lavish homes of American archbishops who haven’t gotten the memo from Pope Francis about a “church which is poor and for the poor.” CNN reports that “10 of the 34 active archbishops in the United States live in buildings worth more than $1 million.” The median home value in the U.S. is $174,200. Not surprisingly, that list includes some of the nation’s most outspoken conservative bishops—and allies of…
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…n Martin stood the ghost of whiteness, the narrative of proper or improper Americanness, or the specter of the “American god,” whose “will” Zimmerman saw himself as carrying out in protecting his neighborhood from the suspicious citizen or the out-of-place, hoodie-wearing “black boy,” to use that loaded phrase of the African-American writer Richard Wright. We must struggle against this “American god” or the idol of the white, western god-man. Inde…
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…connection, once burning with possibility and joy, began to cool, as cell phone calls dwindled and numbers eventually changed or were disconnected. As our shared realities drifted apart in their likeness, like Pigpen, I also turned to technologies that promised connection to try to tamp down the yearning and temper that sense of loss. #5 : Three Ways to American Beauty by Aaron K. Kerr At the height of secular modernity, when Catholics were openi…
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