Religion Dispatches
…ies. I think the reason for that is the Protestant preoccupation with the Word, and they get the Word out however they can. For a long time it was print. In the early 20th century it was radio. By the forties it was television. Both continue, of course. Now, among conservative Protestants, it is very sophisticated uses of internet and video media. Again, there’s that whole trajectory that begins with Luther and comes down all the way through it. I…
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…verage Israeli for longer hours at a lower salary (40% lower on average according to the Bank of Israel). Many stayed on after their permits expired to defray the initial payments made to the middlemen for the chance to come or simply to enjoy Israel’s economic boom. Others came as near-indentured servants who were forbidden to work for anyone but the employer who first hired them, until the Supreme Court finally ruled that this arrangement violat…
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…tegration, perhaps the silent shepherds will take up the ancient cloak of Mordecai and Esther and speak a prophetic word of remonstrance. To begin with, the ministers can remind us of the obvious: there has been much hypocrisy in the immigration debate. All have sinned. The cheap salads and meats consumed at immigration policy conferences and stored in the homes of suburban America were placed there through the labor and sweat of “illegals” (so, t…
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…grants bring both gifts and problems; not neither, but both. Fully closed borders and fully open borders seem to me to be silly ideas on their face. God may have an open-border eschatology in mind but very few humans do. For me, the real issues are that we need an adequate legal path to citizenship for immigrants, and uniform, fair enforcement of the procedures and regulations of that law. Right now it’s almost impossible for many undocumented imm…
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…ny analyst and former official with a view on Tibet and China could fire a cheap shot. The Indian government’s assertiveness vis-à-vis China is refreshing (though achieving it at the expense of refugees and Buddhist monks who fled China at 14 to get an education smacks of bad taste.) The affair has also unsettled the sentiments of those living in India’s predominantly Buddhist Himalayan region, which separates China from India. There were large pr…
Read More…With weapons flowing in from Qaddafi’s looted cache, plus an army that according to Wikileaks is “no longer capable of combat,” it’s unclear how said military can secure the country, regain control of the Sinai—a thousand times harder after what happened yesterday—or hold its end of the bargain up with Israel. Likely, Israel will soon be sending its own drones and planes into the Sinai, if it hasn’t already. From today on, a substantial plurality…
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…y well. So Disney’s take on life in New Orleans and the bayou is at best a cheap commercial ploy, and at worst, a revisionist religious and racist nightmare. Yes, I know, it’s just fantasy, right? But your kids are going to be in my classroom later, and I am going to have to deconstruct this mess. Note: spoilers ahead. If you want to see the mess, stop here. The New Orleans and the Louisiana Bayou that Disney’s writers have concocted for viewer pl…
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…r prayer, a collect for the Third Sunday in Advent: Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us. Yes, Lord, come quickly. Fix this mess we have gotten ourselves into. Like any psalmist, I want God’s justice to come down with great might and rubbish the evildoers: the unjust, the oppressors, the violent. But speed isn…
Read More…m: Is the ability to buy contraceptives, that are now widely available—my Lord, all you have to do is walk into a 7-11 or any shop on any street in America and have access to them—is that right to access those and have them paid for, is that such a towering good that it would suffocate the rights of conscience?” It’s one of the bishops’ favorite arguments: that birth control is so cheap and so widely available that it isn’t even a question of whe…
Read More…ast 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, Jan Shipps, a longtime scholar and canny observer of Mormon experience, wage…
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