Religion Dispatches
…llow Arabs, demonized and derided for years, such that their blood becomes cheap. This happens all too often with minorities; what is unique about the Arab world is the degree to which many dictatorships also oppress the majority. My point in that essay about Tunisia was that we in America and the West generally reflexively associate secularism with what is good and democratic, and conservatism (specifically, in Islam) with that which is antidemo…
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…nner of the End Times preachers. Let me be clear: I am not saying that our best environmental prophets—not Jim Hansen, not Bill McKibben, not Wendell Berry, not Vandana Shiva—are “out there” in a way that should give us pause. These are all sober, scientifically-grounded people. But sober and well-grounded people who have seen the future and who are terrified by what they see find it rather difficult to put up with the temporizing and tergiversati…
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Talk is cheap, and sentimental talk cheapens public discourse in dangerous ways at a time when total sobriety is required. Eight weeks into a public health and economic catastrophe, the facts before us should be sobering enough: Disease and death in this pandemic overwhelmingly afflict communities of color (e.g. despite making up just a third of the state’s population, 70% of the dead in Louisiana have been African American; in Michigan the numbe…
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…ompanies like Hobby Lobby are not called upon to explain their reliance on cheap goods and labor. Exploitative working conditions, even if ones tucked out of sight in overseas factories, can’t be justified by religious rhetoric. Bethany Moreton, author of the recent To Serve God and Wal-Mart, spoke with me about these contradictions. “Evangelical interpretations of sin as personal vice have obscured the structural injustices even in a Christian mo…
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…y or by a wannabe Martin Luther King. While the President sermonized about cheap grace, a daughter of the church climbed a flagpole and took down the American swastika. Like Mary and Elizabeth, Bree Newsome proclaimed that our salvation—wrapped in swaddling clothes—is here in our hands. As an ordained clergyperson nurtured in the bosom of the black church, I am all too familiar with the way in which we tend to spiritualize the material suffering o…
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…truest of true believers, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway, who best encapsulated the Easter message of the Trump White house by reading Christian Easter stories to their captive audiences. Kellyanne took her turn at the dais to read God Gave us Easter, by Lisa Tawn Bergren, a “delightful illustrated picture book for ages 3 and up” which “features the adorable polar bear Little Cub, talking with her father and learning about God’s desig…
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…the Bible—as long as it’s a Bible read with white eyes. Regardless of the best intentions of these six white men, the white Christianity they proselytize is life-denying for people of color. The Christianity taught at these seminaries, which they have now declared cannot be critically explored to uncover unexamined biases, has historically been an apologist for the raging white Christian nationalism we’re witnessing today. Rather than seeking to…
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…l made in the play, but it’s still clear: Doubt paints a picture, from the cheap seats of the Bronx, of the Church in mid-transformation. But things are even more complicated than that, as the story is also an elaborate critique of the way power is wielded in the Church—and the fact that Vatican II managed to change very little. Sister Aloysius is paralyzed by her position, unable to do anything about Father Flynn directly because the Monsignor wi…
Read More…Garlow has used the death of his wife as an opportunity to do what he does best: bash gays and lesbians. In an email he sent to supporters this past Sunday, Garlow wrote: On occasion I would read phrases in newspapers or blogs to describe me as being “anti-gay” or “anti gay-marriage.” First, I am not against homosexual “marriage” because there is no such thing. I cannot be against something that does not exist according to God’s definition. But…
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…n Right and the GOP—an assault that’s advancing to disturbing degrees in a number of Republican-controlled states, even if a court in Texas has stayed the investigation into the Does, for now. Apart from that context, I wouldn’t bother writing a column about an incident of online bullying, something I and every vocal marginalized social media user with any visibility, along with every journalist who covers controversial topics—especially if the jo…
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