Religion Dispatches
…he only people who want to bring back Niebuhr are conservatives. (I’m an admitted fanboy, but that’s about coming from the same church background as Niebuhr as much as anything.) And that doesn’t even get to the worst of it. Douthat misunderstands Francis’ amazing, charismatic realignment of Catholic priorities as a cheap publicity stunt to get hippies in the pew. He completely misunderstands Francis’ speech to Congress as plumping for liberal val…
Read More…ions should be burdened by having to pay for it. The bishops have been claiming since 2012 that birth control is “ubiquitous and inexpensive” and anyone who wants it can get it without insurance coverage for $10 at Target. And as usual, bishops’ allies on the right jumped right on it. Here’s Sean Hannity back in January on his radio show: Why should Americans be paying the $9 a month for birth control pills that you can get at Wal-Mart? Why shoul…
Read More…ions should be burdened by having to pay for it. The bishops have been claiming since 2012 that birth control is “ubiquitous and inexpensive” and anyone who wants it can get it without insurance coverage for $10 at Target. And as usual, bishops’ allies on the right jumped right on it. Here’s Sean Hannity back in January on his radio show: Why should Americans be paying the $9 a month for birth control pills that you can get at Wal-Mart? Why should…
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…ing discoveries of science. Gods and flaming chariots are nothing, they’re cheap comic book fare, compared to what we actually have learned about stars and galaxies and the like. I think that there’s a sort of mirror image, an opposite of scientism, which has a real tin ear for the breathtaking awesomeness of science. All you have to do is listen to David Attenborough or Carl Sagan or other brilliant expositors of science to see just how jaw-dropp…
Read More…real goals? And, don’t worry, I checked, but jibber jabber is a real word. Microsoft Word told me, and Microsoft Word is a real American, because Bill Gates is American. Those of you using iPhones, by the way, are probably Iranians and should be detained or deported. Because Steve Jobs was part Syrian, and Syria is part Iranian, which means your iPhone auto-correct is lying to you. Come to think of it, how do we know Lindsey Graham is not lying to…
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…This soothing high does not help. We need to end this war by unmasking whiteness, challenging our religious faith in competition, and dealing with the long painful history of white (especially male) frustration in a system which awards a very limited number of medals for achieving whiteness. We are all afraid of the copycats—unstable people who may, in the weeks and months ahead, follow Roof’s murderous pattern. But the pattern is already in place…
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…about the act of pruning. Who hasn’t dreamed of simplifying their life, committing to minimalism, and limiting their possessions to the bare necessities? Many religious and philosophical traditions contain strains of such asceticism. From Epictetus to the Buddha, from Christian monasticism to Thoreau, there’s a long tradition of trying to make do with what you already have, and maybe learning to live with less. Silicon Valley, with a futurist and…
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…se who do tends to skew our perceptions). And while all sorts of class dynamics can shape denominational membership, extraordinarily few spiritual communities place a fixed cost barrier to entry. SoulCycle isn’t a church. But it certainly wants to look like a happy universalistic spiritualized family—albeit one with a healthy profit margin. Accordingly, it’s not cheap. A package of 50 classes in the Hamptons (which includes early class signups) ru…
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…hether or not a given monk will be admitted, are increasingly opting for admitting middle-aged worker-monks who, being past the ideal age for beginning rigorous scholastic training, are, understandably, more interested in working than in studying. This means that the population of serious scholarly monks in the great monasteries is gradually declining, something that is obviously contributing to a decline in the intellectual life of the great mona…
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…with some of the ultra-Orthodox, and also with the very-non-Orthodox, who might be cool with you because Messianic Jews have convinced them it’s all okay—which at some level might actually be Talmudically accurate… except that it’s apostasy. Got it? Me neither. But that’s exactly the point: identity is a messy game, and inconsistencies abound. Jews have been trying to figure out their relationship to Christianity since at least the days of Paul….
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