Religion Dispatches
…n come out of this, but then it might also be a bit like taking a fitness class, or going skydiving. These may be relationships of convenience and only for the moments. I’m sure what we will be experiencing will be phenomenal enough to share. Choosing a Tour Company I’ve already said this, but I repeat: there has to be a better way to choose. Later I will comment on how the logistics on the ground are managed as a way to suggest how someone coming…
Read More…ures, mortgage fraud, unemployment, and bankruptcy in the nation. Over the last two decades, more than 1.4 million people moved to Nevada in search of cheap housing and boom-time fueled hospitality, tourism, and construction jobs, more than doubling the state’s population. Now, those speculation-and-spending fueled good times are gone. That volatility does not treat mild-mannered Mormon politicians well: be they Reids, or Romneys. Just last week,…
Read More…the reductive “purity” rhetoric with something reductive of my own, like a cheap criticism that Christianity is anti-sex and anti-body. Which brings me to Augustine’s Confessions, and specifically, reading Augustine’s Confessions with my Intro Theology class this week. Internet, I love Augustine Confessions. I love, love, love, love Augustine’s Confessions. I love it even when I want to throw it across the room and curse. It’s a complicated love,…
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…nk a little more critically about what our criticisms say about us. In the last three or four decades, the distance between the academy and the public has dramatically grown. At the same time, Americans’ faith in (and their tax dollars contributed toward) American higher education has dramatically shrunk. Scholars are simply not doing a good enough job of making their research accessible and relevant to the public. Meanwhile, we have successfully…
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…alth beyond. In the presence of God, and among people of different races, classes, and opinions, the mass should nourish us in our common humanity. So whom exactly is one harming by boycotting, by staying home in solitary prayer? The earthly Church might miss your money in the collection—that’s less on hand for keeping the priests in their expensive costumes and big chairs, and also less for feeding the hungry. But, theologically speaking, you mis…
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…rocess their discriminatory work permits. These “guest” workers, who today number between 250,000 and 400,000 (half of whom are illegal) did not only toil. They fell in love and established families and had children, probably more than 2,000 children, who were sent to state-run schools like Tel Aviv’s Bialik-Rogozin to learn with young Israelis their age to read, to write and to add and subtract—in Hebrew. They also were taught about the miraculou…
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…up for any but the very wealthiest—that cuts affecting working and middle-class families will be extended. As for the “job killer” rhetoric of Sen. Hatch and the rest, the president could actually have some fun poking holes in the fantastical idea that handing rich and powerful people still more money means they will dutifully make productive, job-creating investments in the domestic economy. There has never been a shred of evidence to support t…
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…ronofsky’s tale is disinvested of tacky teardrops falling from the sky and cheap-trick resurrections. The reason reviewers passed over the religious is not simply, I suspect, because of religious illiteracy, but because of the received wisdom of late-modern culture that continues to dwell on a body-soul dualism, with the soul in power, the body a mere marionette. Several of the religious review sites described Randy’s body in metaphorical terms: R…
Read More…hese are big words — hope, forgiveness and peace. They rarely have the megaphone that the party of “nope” enjoys. Nevertheless, they are words that religious people need to protect with all our hearts and souls. We too need a department of homeland security and its job is to protect our words. Let’s start with hope. When a tragedy happens, it often steals our hope. The 9-11 bombing is a terrible tragedy. It is a tragedy with causes in a larger hum…
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…tepping up the pace of deportations of those same persons. Why? Because of cheap politics and the sneer. And also because people of faith have started fighting among themselves instead of working to resolve the problems. We should be in charge of helping politicians have the political cover they need to do the extravagantly right and realistic thing. Consensus is possible if people are willing to give and take; to be a little less convinced that t…
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