Religion Dispatches
…d appeared the year before, and Mark Zuckerberg was feverishly writing the code that would become Facebook. YouTube was just an idea, and wouldn’t appear online in any form until 2005. John Paul did embrace social media as it existed then. He was the first pope to use SMS to send out a daily message to Catholics in 2004, after brokering a deal with Verizon—one of the first troubling commercial agreements between the Vatican and communications comp…
Read More…nation and the world thinks of the events of 1964 in Philadelphia in historical terms and the deaths of these dedicated young men as a pivotal event in a great national movement. Of course, this is true—but it is not the whole truth. For fundamentally this was a human tragedy. Your presence here today underscores that. Three mothers’ sons died here on June 21, 1964. Sons, brothers, a father, a husband—young men who had been nurtured by loving fam…
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…forthcoming probes about whether or not the clinic can be cited for minor code violations. With an air of boredom, Newman ran through the list of tactics he’d turn to if he couldn’t prevent the clinic from opening. They’ll run their “Truth Truck”—a large vehicle with side panels covered with images of late-term aborted fetuses—and plant 200 crosses outside the clinic every day. They’ll limit the number of clients willing to enter by making women…
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…ot points out, philosophy in the ancient world was not so much a system or code as “a way of being.” Philosophy, in this sense, is enmeshed in a life-world. Writers from Marcus Aurelius to Francis Bacon to Ralph Waldo Emerson have conducted such experiments in living as spiritual exercise, a task that entailed writing as philosophic engagement. Philosophy in this mode, Hadot explains, is a continuous process, to be renewed in each instant—a practi…
Read More…he laughing hyenas on MSNBC and in the White House have been cackling hysterically about the “bitter clingers” who actually own guns and value the Second Amendment. Well, who’s laughing now? GOA proudly promoted the lie that the amendment would have created a national gun registry. From Jennifer Steinhauser at the New York Times this morning: As for the N.R.A., while some saw the group’s leader, Wayne LaPierre, as meandering and on defense after t…
Read More…never be discovered embezzling money, enjoying kinky sex, or (The Da Vinci Code notwithstanding) fathering surprise children. It’s not necessary to label something a “cult” to understand the potential peril involved in looking to a living guru. However honest and virtuous that guru might be, she—like the rest of us—is susceptible to tripping and falling right up until the day she dies. What makes some folks willing and able to trust in a charismat…
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…o were contemporaries of Muhammad, known as the Companions, since the historical referent in the verses that deal with fighting are the hostile pagan Arabs of Mecca. Such understandings, however, could and did prove inimical to the process of empire-building, and the need was soon felt in official and certain legal circles to promote the military jihad as a religiously meritorious activity. This is precisely what happened during the expansion of t…
Read More…of the Islamic faith into a “war chant” simply because a few yahoos run around shouting it after some ghastly act. When the Westboro Baptist Church says “Thank God for 9/11” and “Praise the Lord for dead US soldiers” few would argue that “Thank God” or “Praise the Lord” are somehow inextricably linked to fundamentalists. By controlling the way we talk about Islam, the powerful and ideologically driven elites in our society influence the way we thi…
Read More…port was released, Monk openly appeared (in possible violation of military code) at the Values Voters Summit for a panel. The Liberty Institute’s Jeff Mateer put his hand on Monk’s shoulder and praised him, saying, “We’ve gotten phone calls from military members who are undergoing discrimination…and with the exception of him, those folks that have called us have all wanted to remain anonymous. Sergeant Monk, to his credit, is willing to stand up.”…
Read More…pulpy example of a larger pattern of scriptural citation that obscures and promotes tensions between market forces and nationalism, dynamics I discuss in depth in my book, The Babylon Complex (Oxford University Press, 2014). A reboot of the older Jack Ryan series—based on Tom Clancy novels like Hunt for Red October—Shadow Recruit uses an all new screenplay by Adam Cozad and David Koepp. Still, the film is highly reminiscent of the earlier series’…
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