Religion Dispatches
…id you have a specific audience in mind when writing? The book is aimed at Western Christians, particularly mainline Protestants, social justice Roman Catholics, progressive and emergent evangelicals. But I hope it invites anyone who is might be willing to give Christianity a second look—those who are “spiritual-but-not-religious” and the “church alumni club.” And those who might be completely post-religious and just want to read a good story abou…
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…wer seems relatively clear. The Church is growing in South America, in sub-Saharan Africa, and is even making significant inroads in the Far East. And what these emerging Catholic populations want is a culturally conservative theology (recall the uproar in these same regions when the openly gay Anglican bishop, Gene Robinson, was confirmed). The code word for most of that uproar is “anti-Modern.” So the irony of Catholic anti-Modernism multiplies,…
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…Plants? As Brunk and Coward are careful to point out, no religion or moral code is monolithic. Expert scholars may hold different views than lay practitioners of a particular faith. Throughout the book, lay adherents and expert interpreters alike offer perspectives on how GM foods intersect with their religious and ethical dietary traditions. Each author conducted additional focus groups among their respective discipline or tradition. In Lyne Lét…
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…s empty of people, that suggestion was contradicted by the reports of many Western visitors. The phrase was most pointedly used to claim that the Arabs of Palestine had no distinct Palestinian identity. They were ‘‘Arabs,’’ not a cohesive national group. That Palestine was not ‘‘empty’’ (in either the demographic or political sense) soon became clear to some Jewish observers. This was ruefully acknowledged in the telegram sent home by two rabbis f…
Read More…t the Muslim Brotherhood’s mission in the United States is ‘destroying the Western Civilization from within’—a practice the Muslim Brothers call ‘civilization jihad.’” As a result, they contend, “the apparent involvement of those with such ties raises serious security concerns that warrant your urgent attention.” Setting aside the fact that Bachmann et al. rely entirely on Gaffney—who has been dismissed by fellow conservatives as a “crazy bigot”—f…
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…rvest festival. On the other, Jewish monotheism arguably bequeathed to the Western world the notion that history has a direction, and that the passage of linear time has a trajectory. In Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical and esoteric tradition, this dichotomy came to be understood as one of the fundamental push-pulls of the human condition. Sometimes a situation might need more circle, more consensus; other times, more hierarchy, more planning and pro…
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…er I observe a new social reality. Gay life in the United States and other Western countries has been transformed in public life to the extent of becoming almost “mainstream.” Lesbians and gays have come out and are fully accepted in leading social, political and cultural positions. The stigma that engulfed homosexuality also in academic circles evaporated—programs of Lesbian and Gay studies as well as the more encompassing Gender Studies are popu…
Read More…areers for women; and reforming the media such that 1950s gender norms are promoted and “sex and the city lifestyles” are discouraged. He claims the only other alternative to these “reforms,” which he acknowledges are restrictions on women’s rights, is “the creation of a network of surrogacy facilities in low cost countries and basically ‘outsource breeding,’” with the state as foster parent because “career obsessed” women would not prioritize car…
Read More…echoed by Rush Limbaugh, now promises, “Islamists, in particular the anti-Western Muslim Brotherhood, seem poised to take power throughout the Middle East as a result of riots that have already toppled one Arab regime and are threatening others, in what some are calling only the latest wave of an Islamic ‘tsunami’ sweeping the globe.” Oh, and look! The Brotherhood has learned its tactics from Bill Ayers and Code Pink. Don’t you love living in a f…
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…that the new museum would promote tolerance “just as building health clubs promoted health.” This was not the first time that the Wiesenthal Center and the LA Museum of Tolerance formulated its own foreign policy; and in doing so implied that they were speaking for the American Jewish community at large. The center endorsed enthusiastically the Bush administration’s Iraq War, and in 2006 it dubbed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez an anti-Semite. A…
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