Religion Dispatches
…t wanted to get off the phone, so I could say out loud a soft, “yes!”, make a silent prayer of gratitude, and then just cry a little. I dressed in white to attend Friday prayer (not as the imam, mind you). Then later in the day, the mailman delivered my unscented cosmetics, from the Labayk Company; and my shoes came by parcel post, from Zappos. I put them on and started walking with them. Altogether, it was a magnanimous day. I’m so happy I got my…
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…d from not only friendships, but the lucrative ministries that Pearson himself helped to create. All that said, there are different ways that people experience this, or faith healings, or other performances you find in these environments. Not everyone is in lockstep, when you sit down and talk with them. I remember vividly the 2007 event at Gimenez’s church in Virginia Beach—this was before John Gimenez passed away—and there was quite a lineup of…
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…are. For Republicans, the ducks are in Colorado Springs specifically, and El Paso County more generally. Following his visit to our rather modestly sized (like his hands) basketball arena, he’ll move on to Denver, where the suburbs are friendly while the city area is hostile. News of Trump’s visit hit just as I got word that the Clinton campaign was pulling its commercials from the state. Polls suggest that Colorado is a fairly safe state for a f…
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…ulsion to connect. But this ashram sold wifi. Monks rested their keys and cellphones on the table during meals. And during yoga on the first night, our yogi took pictures with her phone as we attempted the warrior pose. Was I back in Los Angeles? Why wasn’t this different? The staff—all devotees of the Ananda movement, a Hindu spiritual fellowship founded in northern California during the late 60s—only reinforced feelings of familiarity. There was…
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…Indian television and watch the India parliament debate the law. Link yourself, pit yourself, against Indian corruption. The future depends on what you do today,” she implored. [As of the end of August a compromise had been reached, but 73-year-old activist Anna Hazare has said the battle is only half won. -Eds.] “Prisoners Threatened to Kill the Teachers, But They Kept the Session Going” Bedi, who has embraced a variety of religious influences in…
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…wrence’s 2005 Constantine, a film adaptation of Alan Moore’s DC graphic novel Hellblazer, details the work of its titular character, a metaphysical noir detective who lives in a Los Angeles that exists in a space equally with the dimensions of Heaven and Hell. As with Dogma and Good Omens, Constantine engages a certain “bureaucratizing of the sacred,” an understanding of the transcendent realm as reminiscent of the political, social, legal, and ec…
Read More…half. There were still probably 80 empty seats, and it was clear that some number of attendees had free tickets. The largest financial supporter of the event was a local news/talk radio station and its representatives were the only media allowed in. As I arrived with my Religion Dispatches press badge they stopped me before I even got to the door. I chatted with an AP reporter and he said AP had been trying for weeks to gain media access—but that…
Read More…ts include the Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land and Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver, in yet another sign of how the broader religious right cravenly seeks an alliance with blacks and Latinos, even as no one says peep about the John Birch Society co-sponsoring the Conservative Political Action Conference. Wendy Wright, the president of Concerned Women for America who cut her teeth working for Operation Rescue, claimed in a statement, “once a…
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…at our peril—and that of American democracy. If men like Woodfill and Hotze can be so publicly casual about dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars on a phony “investigation” that led to terrorism, it’s likely because they believe they will face no consequences for the promotion and funding of conspiratorial efforts that fuel violence. Unfortunately, they’re probably correct in that assessment….
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…gious progressives have done a lot of serious work on the importance of fidelity in all relationships and the difference between fully-realized relationships that participate in the sacred vs. liaisons that fall short of that mark. Religious progressives, after all, are the ones who have tried to enrich, not degrade, the marriage sacrament by arguing that God blesses all deeply committed marriage bonds, not just marriages made by heterosexuals. Wh…
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