Religion Dispatches
…preparedness more than Mormons. I myself have a 72-hour kit in my bedroom closet, an earthquake-ready pair of running shoes, whistle, and a flashlight under every bed in the house, and 9 months of rice and beans in the garage. (Although I do expect our supplies will run out in about 48 hours because we’re the types that feed the neighbors.) Mitt Romney, this tropical storm is in your wheelhouse. I bet your pragmatic mind is spinning through al…
Read More…eports like Donohue’s and Deal’s are cropping up, and Mormons are feeling extra sensitive about the fate of the nation’s first major party presidential candidate. But I’ll bet you a twelve pack of caffeine-free Diet Coke and a dozen pink-frosted sugar cookies that there is no anti-Mormon phonebanking script in use by Catholics for Obama. Anywhere. Is anti-Mormonism real? Yes. But even if one poorly-trained rogue phonebanker veered off script into…
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…as the most important issue. The political divide in the Jewish community between Orthodox Jews and the rest of American Jewry is reflected in the fact that Orthodox Jews support Romney over Obama by 54 to 40 percent, while Conservative, Reform and “just Jewish” voters favor Obama by between 64 and 68 percent. Orthodox Jews made up just 8.3% of the respondents to the AJC poll. The rest: Conservative, 26.6%; Reconstructionist, 1.6%; Reform, 32.2%;…
Read More…l knock the United States off its global perch, there has always been one excellent reason to bet on a second American century: We have more babies than the competition. [taps on x-ray board and draws circles with pointy thing] Ah, see, I think we may have a problem in this area here. Because while there is a general sense in which “we” Americans “have babies,” there is also a more specific sense in which “we” women who undergo pregnancies and giv…
Read More…e all waiting, of course, to hear what Vice President Joe Biden will say next Tuesday as he presents the findings of his gun task force. You can bet there will be something about closing the now infamous “gun show” loophole that allows for nearly 40% of gun purchases to proceed without a background check, as well something about reinstating bans on assault weapons—like the weapon used at Sandy Hook elementary. Maybe Vice President Biden will also…
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…d adults in his life, linking that childhood trauma to his own early homosexuality and announcing his deliverance from homosexuality as a lifestyle. While Mclurkin begain talking this way as early as 2002 it is undoubtedly his comments in 2009 that are the source of the withdrawal of his invitation to the DC event. In 2009, at the annual Holy Convocation convention of the predominantly black and Pentecostal Church of God in Christ denomination, Mc…
Read More…ver end. (Indeed, you can only kill a people you’ve demonized, and that’s exactly what the military government has pushed state media to do since the June 30th coup.) For those sadly naive protesters who thought overthrowing the only elected government in their entire history, well, no such future is visible to me. I’ve been wrong before. I hope I am. But I doubt it. It’s hard to say what will happen here except that things will get worse. Probabl…
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…experience it. Soon after the release of a Justin Bieber profile in Complex last year the internet exploded in mockery at a quote that emerged from the interview: “Like I said, you don’t need to go to church to be a Christian. If you go to Taco Bell, that doesn’t make you a taco.” Bieber detractors are quick to pounce on such low-hanging fruit as evidence of his dimwittedness. What was missed by audiences so eager for a punch line was a young man…
Read More…tion is currency and anonymity is easy to come by. A version of this paradox exists in the realm of mass shootings, too. Acts of random violence often seem, in part, to function as dramatic plays for attention or celebrity status. The Orlando nightclub shooter reportedly checked his phone for news about the shooting during the actual event; the man who murdered hostages at the Hyper Cacher kosher grocery store in Paris last year filmed the attack…
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…e world, the answer is [David Foster Wallace’s novel] Infinite Jest. But I bet you’re asking about books in my field. Among those, I wish I had written The Madonna of 115th Street (by Robert Orsi) or Rebecca’s Revival (by Jon Sensbach). Orsi’s book is classic because it focused on everyday religious experiences of Italian immigrants, a cluster of activities that many outsider observers considered to be “bad religion.” Orsi did, and still does, fin…
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