Religion Dispatches
…ers qualitatively superior to mine in nearly every respect. Since the early 1980s, this man had had season tickets to our favorite team. He’d not just lived through but witnessed firsthand the golden ages of purple reign. He’d sat through the playoffs, too. Magic, Kareem, Worthy, Shaq, Kobe. On their way to ten titles! I was ablaze with jealousy. But later in our conversation, as the topic shifted to our respective travels, he made an offhand rema…
Read More…at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and attempted to locate Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 using a magical ritual that combined Islamic elements with shamanic practices. On Thursday Ibrahim Mat Zin, also known as Rajah Bomoh Sedunia Nujum, delivered a press conference (in which he demonstrated a squint that bore an uncanny resemblance to Pat Robertson.) He initially stated that he had been invited to perform his ritual by one of Malaysia’s “…
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…t difficult and dangerous prisoners to be locked in a secluded location for 10 days without speaking, meditating about 12 hours each day, guided by two teachers. There would be no guards with weapons, no prison officials allowed inside. “After it was over, we learned the prisoners had threatened to kill the teachers several times. But the teachers never told us. They just kept the session going,” she said. By day six, the turning point for most pe…
Read More…hority in question will cede way (in other words you block the aisles for a 10 hour flight, or you file lawsuits and cost the government time and money defending the law you tried to convince it not to pass, and then once you get an accommodation you sue to be exempted from that as well). The real difference here is that if you don’t want to deal with ultra-Orthodox men interfering in your travel, you can just take another airline. If only it were…
Read More…see modern state flags and designated state flowers around the time of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, also known as the World’s Columbian Exposition. States wanted their own flags to fly, and their own flowers to display, in their exhibitions. Decades later, in 1927, the legislatures of seven states — Alabama, Florida, Maine, Missouri, Oregan, Texas, and Wyoming — decided they needed state birds thanks to the efforts of progressive women’s clubs…
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…ing creative fiction. Three points of reference we used were Alix Spiegel’s 1997 This American Life radio story, “Pray” (about the strange goings on at Ted Haggard’s New Life Church); Jane Lampman’s two September 1999 Christian Science Monitor stories on The World Prayer Center and the ‘spiritual mapping’ movement; and René Holvast’s 2005 dissertation for the University of Utrecht, “Spiritual Mapping: The Turbulent Career of a Contested American P…
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…t simply a story of settlers versus natives. When I did research on oil in Alaska, there were some Natives who were profiting from oil and gas leases, and others, specifically the Gwich’in, who had chosen to remain outside of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and not sell their future for a mess of oil pottage. I spoke to a water protector and he indicated that the line between those for and against the pipeline runs between family and triba…
Read More…prophecy” know that destruction must come, and violence has to occur. (Matt 11:12) Those who want to wrestle for “God’s Kingdom” will have to be forthright, plainspoken, and not about building bridges. Sounds like Sarah Palin to me. Couple Palin’s mission with the tea parties, and well, you get the picture. Whatever you think about Sarah Palin, you have to admit, any way it goes, the dice have rolled right by her, even when it seems she has crappe…
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…to mass in any given week and there were nearly 60,000 Catholic priests and 135,000 nuns, with the nation’s 18,800 parishes boasting an average of two priests each. The sacraments were still a major part of most Catholics’ lives: there were nearly 1 million baptisms and 350,000 Catholic marriages. The controversy over Humanae Vitae ten years earlier had largely subsided; most Catholics used birth control and most priests ignored the issue. The Cat…
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…aring the story, she returns home, opens Google India, and tracks down the phone number for the sweet shop her grandfather mentioned. Within seconds, she has called the store on her smart phone, and Yusuf’s grandson—who answers—has likewise opened Google to research visas for a reunion too long denied. We can understand the implications of this storyline by putting it into conversation with its longer historical context. The logic of the plot—that…
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