Religion Dispatches
…s, lemons, limes, and cotton, Muslims also introduced… pasta. Yeah, pasta. Bet you didn’t see that one coming. Given the connection between pasta, pizza and sex, that’s a major You’re Welcome. I mean, can you imagine Italian food without pasta? Can you imagine America without Italian food? Yes, Lindsey Graham, unfortunately it’s true. Even Al Capone was our fault. Or Al-Capone, at least, who may or may not have been the same person. We lost track…
Read More
…ter assisted in planning a public health campaign, which many believed was promoting abstinence. (It was eventually cancelled after sexual educators stirred up a ruckus). But you really can’t beat visiting the Vatican when it comes to proving your allegiance to Catholicism. Current PAN President Felipe Calderón attended Pope John Paul II’s beatification this spring. And the PRI’s probable 2012 presidential candidate has also publicly traveled to t…
Read More…hat they’re used to. But there’s a lot more happening here. I’m willing to bet that there’s something more sinister at work. The truth is, this video wasn’t made for my eyes—the tech-savvy, Google-happy, myth-busting Gen X-er who doesn’t trust the system. It was made for my Great Aunt. And for that matter, everybody else’s Great Aunt. So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised when I’m typing away at the computer and I hear a Grandmother in the Senior Adul…
Read More
…onse. In this, only the secular way of death fully honors the dead, where “better place” platitudes betray him. Thomas’ paradoxically titled “Refusal to Mourn” is in fact the refusal to mitigate grief, to paper over the universe’s forever-loss of singular person in guaze-promises of eternity: “I shall not murder/The mankind of her going with a grave truth.” Yes, dying may be harder for the atheist. But what I cannot understand, and reject totall…
Read More
…cks the coalition-building skills that a certain bending of the truth can abet. He is willing to insult those whose support might help him actually gain power. The link between politics and politeness—both of which draw on artifice to smooth over conflict—is one he both understands and repudiates. As suicidal as it has proven to be, his refusal to change his behavior to appear more “presidential” has a certain integrity to it, which his supporters…
Read More…l, and hard work. With just enough walk-shoveling. That was always a risky bet for a wonky Yankee Mormon. And evidence suggests that it hasn’t worked: evangelical Christians are consolidating behind Rick Santorum. Had Romney not spent the entire first part of his candidacy trying to pass himself off as a regular Christian conservative, he might be in a position to state the obvious: to take the Republican party by the shoulders and make the case t…
Read More
…are official, though, is the fact that he has defended false equivalencies between pedophilia and homosexuality as nothing more than harmless “Christian beliefs regarding proper sexual ethics.” Crucially, Price also denounced the Obama administration’s landmark support for transgender students as an “absurd” and “clear invasion of privacy.” If Price can’t acknowledge that a transgender girl should be able to use the ladies’ room like all her girlf…
Read More
…mophobia in the culture and in the appropriately-named ICE agency, you can bet that the “permanent” test will actually be considerably more rigorous for same-sex applicants than for “legally married – five minutes ago” couples. Sixteen other countries already recognize same-sex couples for immigration purposes, including Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Israel, South Africa, Sweden, and the UK. It is estimated that 36,000 U.S.-based couples wou…
Read More…ly Hindu, that women in Hinduism are subordinate to men, and that Hinduism promoted social inequality and injustice. In the absence of any theological perspectives, Marxist/Ambedkarist interpretations of Hinduism did have an impact on Western understandings, including those of noted religion scholars such as Doniger and Paul Courtright. This isn’t to say that Marxist approaches to religion can’t be useful, but it’s important to understand the cont…
Read More…peats that she is a straight up atheist, not agnostic, not wondering. Safe bet that this is the most often the word ‘atheist’ has been used in a single episode of a network drama. The wrinkle is that her daughter is part of a youth-y evangelical group, having converted a few seasons back. The writers use her for comic effect sometimes, as when the grownups are in crisis around the kitchen table and you suddenly hear a group of teenage girls beltin…
Read More