Religion Dispatches
…ir husbands. These organizations all promote literature, lectures, conferences, and other materials intended to promote this perspective, as well as the starkly delineated gender norms and expectations upon which this view is based. I’d be willing to bet the t-shirt will be showing up at homeschool conventions across the country this spring….
Read More…d-in for the black underclass, dominant. The College Dropout effused the anxieties of a particular black bourgeois sensibility, and the album put the lie to the myth that hip hop and middle-class identity are mutually exclusive. In fact, on the track “All Falls Down,” Kanye performed an overdose of the proverbial “conspicuous consumption” as he rapped: I wanna act ballerific like it’s all terrific I got a couple past due bills, I won’t get specifi…
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…ire and religious conservatism’s love of an interventionist god—McCain’s tax cuts for the rich and Palin’s prayers for a new Alaskan pipe line—the only salvation to be found is in the form of bail-outs, indulgences, to borrow a pre-Protestant term. And those are reserved for “the new chosen,” as the Fellowship calls America’s elite, all those now preparing for cozy afterlives to their public lives in penthouses and beach houses and a ranch down in…
Read More…ver end. (Indeed, you can only kill a people you’ve demonized, and that’s exactly what the military government has pushed state media to do since the June 30th coup.) For those sadly naive protesters who thought overthrowing the only elected government in their entire history, well, no such future is visible to me. I’ve been wrong before. I hope I am. But I doubt it. It’s hard to say what will happen here except that things will get worse. Probabl…
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…d adults in his life, linking that childhood trauma to his own early homosexuality and announcing his deliverance from homosexuality as a lifestyle. While Mclurkin begain talking this way as early as 2002 it is undoubtedly his comments in 2009 that are the source of the withdrawal of his invitation to the DC event. In 2009, at the annual Holy Convocation convention of the predominantly black and Pentecostal Church of God in Christ denomination, Mc…
Read More…us exercise, regardless of the impact on third parties and the harms done to them. And you can bet if that strategy succeeds here, we’ll see it in use very soon in other contexts, like exemptions to LGBT non-discrimination laws and marriage equality protections. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that….
Read More…the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Why sadly? Because the next year will be marked by vigorous debate regarding the circumstances under which federal funds will be granted. You can bet your bottom dollar that those religious groups totally opposed to embryonic stem research will be advocating for restrictive guidelines and mobilizing their members to advocate against such research. Bad theological arguments about human life will abo…
Read More…is letting its inmates do in-house programming these days. (If it did, I’d bet it would be a far more interesting show.) Since 2006, Hovind has been serving a ten-year prison sentence after being convicted of 58 federal counts, including twelve tax offenses, one count of obstructing federal agents and forty-five counts of structuring cash transactions. Actually, the Creation Series is a DVD featuring many of Hovind’s classic silliness. (His assert…
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…ted workers. Both in word and in deed the candidates stoked the flames of extreme xenophobia and racism, denouncing Mexicans as criminally prone, culturally inferior, and downright un-American. As a result, Angle was narrowly defeated by the more moderate Harry Reid, whilst Brewer went on to beat her opponent handily. The basis of Brewer’s popularity is her signature, SB 1070, the most severe anti-immigrant law in the nation. But rather than an ab…
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…alking about the rest of us.) As far as students go, they need to practice noticing and talking about the skills and habits they’re getting in religious studies. They’ll have to articulate these things to their parents and prospective employers. I bet they can do it better than I have. When they do, they’ll be a lot more ready to take over the world, and that will be a good thing. This essay is based on a talk given to Brown University undergradua…
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