Religion Dispatches
…y fond words for John Hagee, joining the ranks of shortsighted Jews who refuse to see the profound crackpot anti-Semitism lurking beneath the Texas pastor’s support for Israel. My Jesus Year therefore represents something of an odd chapter in the history of Jews and church, but one that may very well be indicative of the forces at play in our time. Clearly, if even a nice Orthodox boy can get permission to do it, the act of a Jew entering into a C…
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…lmed by emails from educators around the country accusing him of trying to promote religion. Indeed, the version of the resolution that passed the Senate and was amended in the House said, “Evidence relating to global climatic change is complex and subject to varying scientific interpretations,“ and that “all instruction in the public schools relating to global climatic change be presented in a balanced and objective manner.” For anyone who follow…
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…has moved farther to the right as mainstream politicians steer clear of causes, issues, or ideas that would place them in the progressive (code name for lefty-socialist) camp. In the meantime, the legacy media has muzzled itself, likewise fearful of the right’s blanket criticism of the “liberal press.” (For more on this see David Domke’s study of the post 9/11 press: Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the ‘War on Terror’ and the Echoing…
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…ed, on the razor’s edge between yearning and taunting, Gimme your hands ‘cause you’re wonderful Gimme your hands ‘cause you’re wonderful In his marvelous exercise in amateur hermeneutics, Ziggy ’72: A Catalogue of Lost Objects, Bowie fan Harvey Molloy offers a poignant meditation on the fan-idol dynamic. Pondering fans’ role in apotheosizing one of their own, Molloy arrives at a realization of the entheos at the heart of all fan cultures, secular…
Read More…oping a line of legal reasoning that the future lawyers in her class might use, she wove her way to two Supreme Court cases in the 1960s, in both of which the court ruled that prayer in public schools was unconstitutional. A student questioned the relevance of the 1777 event to the court rulings, because in 1777 the country did not yet have a Constitution. “And what did we have at that time?” Dunbar asked. Answer: “The Declaration of Independence….
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…of the social justice movements (especially around worker justice issues) used Yiddish as an organizing language but spoke “American.” The conceptual vocabulary of the union movement and the socialist movement was embraced by the Jewish participants in those movements; and continued to be used when those Jews started their own organizations, such as the American Jewish Congress. During the seventies (which was, for all intents and purposes, when…
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…ways, some more sophisticated than others. While some advocates of Zionism used it to imply that Palestine was 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 be…
Read More…answer: “When women are paving the way for sharia, this is presumably because women want sharia.” They don’t want freedom because they feel attracted to subservience and subjugation. The English author Fay Weldon has noted that “For women, there is something sexually very alluring about submission.” Muslims like to point out that there are more women than men in the West who convert to Islam, and this is in fact partly true. Islam means “submissi…
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…sociation in 2002 for violations of six different provisions of its ethics code, including provisions that prohibit counselors from “seek[ing] to meet their personal needs at the expense of clients,” taking advantage of the “trust and dependency of clients,” and deceptive promotion of products. At Wyler’s Arizona retreat, I was introduced to that healing touch therapy: I sat on the floor between the outstretched legs of a camp guide, my head leani…
Read More…there is a thin line between making too much of the ties among people because they have contact with each other and erring on the side of caution—thereby missing important influences . But Lizza’s essay gives us a solid starting point for exploring Bachmann’s influences: her law school mentor John Eidsmoe. (“Solid” because Lizza quotes Eidsmoe saying he believes Bachmann’s views are in line with his own, and quotes Bachmann praising Eidsmoe.) Wh…
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