Religion Dispatches
…nuel, like other black churches, has been the target of violence, not just last night, but throughout its history. In an excellent essay at TPM, Benjamin Park writes about how black churches have long “served as a flashpoint for hatred from those who fear black solidarity, and as a result these edifices have been the location for many of our nation’s most egregious racial terrorist acts.” In 1822, one of Emanuel’s founders, Denmark Vesey, was one…
Read More…limited to monitoring the progress of the Congressional Democrats’ sit-in last night mostly by Twitter. Still, what I saw was fascinating, and frankly, inspiring. It’s hard not to admire a 76-year-old John Lewis using the same tactics he used in the campaign against segregation for a new kind of liberation. We’ll come back to his determination later. First, to answer your questions: Was the sit-in a publicity stunt? Yes, and a successful one at t…
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…mosque, either. She probably has more in common with other Britons of her class and community than religion abstractly. And if it is the case that a mosque and a row of English houses are immiscible, then what happens to a synagogue, a Hindu Temple or, indeed, even a church? At what point does national identity become fixed, and closed to other religions? How can Englishness accommodate secularity, considering that widespread agnosticism and risin…
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…essage of the book, which is, “Hey, you know what, we can start shining a flashlight around this possibility space.” If I can sit down and make up 40 completely different versions [of the afterlife], then we could, as a community, make up many hundreds and thousands of versions of what might be going on. The important part is the exploration, instead of the pretense to certainty. You have this philosophical commitment to possibility. But there are…
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…ndrick’s lyrics reflect existential questions authors like Kelly Brown Douglas and I have been wrestling with post-Trayvon. Also, I live on the Westside of Chicago where my neighbors are well acquainted with the visceral reality Kendrick’s lyrics speak to. I suppose what follows is a review. But more specifically I am going to be interacting with Kendrick’s UU as a prophetic text of lamentation—it is a text which, like all texts of lament, reveals…
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…ific terrorist attacks in Paris, Al-Aqsa mosque in Philadelphia received a phone message stating, “I hope you people are happy about what you did in Paris. I’d like to state for the record that Allah is a piece of pork shit.” A few weeks later, in the early morning hours of December 7, the mosque manager unlocked the front doors for the early morning fajr prayer. As he was about to enter, he noticed the severed head of a pig lying next to the door…
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…for shying away from hot-button religious culture war battles, “visited by phone” with Rowan County, Kentucky court clerk Kim Davis yesterday, according to a statement issued by his campaign. “I let her know how proud I am of her for not abandoning her religious convictions and standing strong for religious liberty,” the former pastor, Arkansas governor, and now two-time presidential candidate said in a statement. Arguing that “the Supreme Court c…
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…t of perceptive fiction. It’s an authorial diagnosis. “She’s got a lot of classic post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms,” Collins told TIME’s Lev Grossman in a 2013 interview. “She has nightmares. She has flashbacks. And in the beginning you can see she’s practicing avoidance.” That depiction serves a larger end. “I think that it’s very uncomfortable for people to talk to children about war,” Collins told Grossman. “But then you have young peopl…
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…and Kurdistan. The pharmacist showed me a video he had made with his cell phone, which did indeed look like a cattle surge of vehicles illumined by a few eerie lights. Now the news from his town is “very bad”—there is no water or electricity or food in stores. Christians are forced to make payments to be allowed to survive and have to pretend to be Muslims and go to the mosque, and ISIS militants roam around the streets and do whatever they want….
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…merican millennials. First, there was an interesting article that came out last year which indicated that African-American millennials believe the black church is increasingly obsolete. This piece identified the black church as being “out of step on scientific developments” and charged that some black millennials “feel Christianity leaves no room for authenticity.” Certainly the scandal and hypocrisy-plagued version of the black church that younge…
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