Religion Dispatches
…known for attacks on Scientology, decided to send a message to the Catholic Church by shutting down the official Vatican website (still not responding as of this posting). What are the Church’s misdeeds, according to these code crusaders? They go back to the selling of indulgences in the 16th century. And more recently, of course, there’s the Church’s interference in Italy’s domestic politics. (Not just Italy, we’d have to say.) – The Eds. …
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…ascist protesters. The date of these concerts alone, 8/8, should give us pause, since the number 88 is, as documented by the Anti-Defamation League, “a white supremacist numerical code for ‘Heil Hitler.’” And this year, Feucht openly expressed admiration for his anti-government, “patriot” militia “security team.” https://twitter.com/seanfeucht/status/1424525562278604804?s=20 Indeed, Feucht tweeted “If you mess with them or our 1st amendment right…
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…ther Coughlin—to whom Beck owes a debt for his invention of hate radio—because Coughlin, at one time a supporter of the New Deal, changed course and supported fascism and authoritarianism. In the hall of mirrors that houses Beck’s history that means that social justice=fascism. Conservatives face a serious challenge from Beck, however: as the panelists at the social justice session at the Freedom Federation Summit admitted, millenial evangelicals…
Read More…about a brokered convention, and being willing to serve. These are merely code words to try to rally her flagging base of supporters to give money to SarahPac. To push back on the HBO movie, SarahPac commissioned a video, “Game change we can believe in,” a highlight reel of Palin on the 2008 campaign trail. Of course, the Pac is fundraising on the movie, hoping to get $20.12 for the 2012 race. While Rick Santorum has taken Palin’s 2008 role over…
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…as partly because of Cantor’s effort to grasp the infinite, and partly because he was ridiculed by so many mathematicians who refused to try. Supercomputers might let researchers expand our understanding of pi. But even then, the task is endless. When people search for pi, they search for the infinite. They’ll never reach it, as long as they’re finite beings with finite imaginations. But there’s some wonder that comes with trying. Some satisfactio…
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…d his community” (which basically means Sunni, though sectarians of all stripes treat it as a literal description of their pet approach to Islam; it is surprisingly difficult to find an accessible but nonpartisan explanation of this crucial concept online) were routinely used as code in some Muslim organizations for “Sufis (to say nothing of the hated Shiah) need not apply here.” As with those evangelicals who treat their rather novel dogmas as se…
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…s to employees’ dependents. Legal statutes strengthened the rights of a spouse at the expense of other kin, including parents and adult children. Lack of a marriage license meant that courts, hospitals, or landlords would refuse to accept a couple’s claim that they were entitled to such privileges. This was a departure from the long tradition in which private, informal agreements to live as a couple entitled a man and a woman to public recognition…
Read More…e men from murdering women or to send a moral message. In the 1983 Revised Code of Canon Law, only two groups are protected. A Catholic may incur automatic excommunication if he or she attempts to assassinate the Pope (you don’t even need to succeed, just trying is enough) or if one successfully procures an abortion. Only fetuses and popes are worthy of consideration. The rest of us are on our own. Perhaps most cruel in the Brazilian case is the f…
Read More…” known as George Spelvin, American. “Spelvin” was the stage name an actor used at the the time when, in addition to his main role, he doubled in a small part. The Spelvins of the world were servants, butlers, messengers, clerks, men-on-the-street, and passersby. Pegler’s Spelvin, though, was an early Archie Bunker. Union men, uppity women, swells, bubbleheads, and, eventually, foreigners, blacks, and Jews all gave George Spelvin a stomachache. In…
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…ht of and sometimes in spite of their in-the-head beliefs. Two of the more usefully analytic definitions of religion that I offer my students, which is not to say they are the “right” ones, come from Catherine Albanese, Professor of American Religious History at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and Columbia University’s Chair of Religious Studies, Mark C. Taylor: Religion can be understood as a system of symbols (creed, code, cultus)…
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