Religion Dispatches
…ning for him, but it serves as a powerful cultural symbol to unite diverse European tribes into a pan-European community. His Christianity is political and disconnected from actual devout practice—yet Christendom it is, rather than any secular foundation of European politics. The idea of a Europe that is allegedly culturally homogenous because it shares a single Christian heritage, and the claim that European countries are under siege from a viole…
Read More…t, because the Holocaust unleashed “the greatest anti-nationalist and anti-European propaganda campaign the world has ever seen.” As a result, “people like myself, and other cultural conservative leaders of today, are still suffering under this propaganda campaign because of that one man.” Breivik further blames Hitler for failing to “liberate Jerusalem” from “Islamic occupation” and deporting European Jews to Israel. Instead, he maintains, Hitler…
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…cost of true discipleship. The price it was called upon to pay was all too cheap…We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale; we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition…Was there ever a more terrible and disastrous instance of Christianizing the world than this? It’s regrettable, I think, that “cheap grace” has turned into a kind of meme that Rod Dreher can toss into his debate with Andrew Sullivan without…
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…church, they’re marinating, so to speak, in the the various teachings of a number of people. I’ve covered many an event where I’ve been waiting in line to get in, and the inevitable conversation with the people around you goes something like this: they ask first where you go to church, and second which teachers you admire, and then you get into a long conversation about the relative virtues of all of them. A really good example of how all these te…
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…a random sample size and therefore isn’t statistically representative. The number of individuals reporting victimization in Episcopal spaces is alarming nonetheless. However, I would argue the data is more likely to under- than to overestimate the scope of the abuse that occurs. To see why, the survey results must be interpreted in light of the Episcopal Church’s larger culture of inaction around sexual violence. See no evil, hear no evil… LGBTQ+…
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…Euro—and the chaos that would ensue—Tsipras was forced to propose terms to European leaders very close to those that the referendum had rejected. The Europeans refused them, counter-offering terms still harsher for Greece. Economists the world over expressed grave concerns about this final European proposal. Not only would it cause a humanitarian crisis, the argument went, but it was self-defeating: so crippling would these terms be to the Greek e…
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…ability of cell phones to be used for impure activities, some Jewish cell-phone users have requested so-called “kosher” phones. The idea is to offer conservative Jews a phone that is free of “corrupting influences” of the sort that are already avoided by ultra-orthodox Jews through a ban on television and some radio. Reuters reported in February 2008 that Bezeq Israel Telecom launched a new “kosher” landline phone service, which will block calls…
Read More…plugged-in lifestyle doesn’t really get at the heart of the issue. I think the Amish, of all people, have it right. It’s not so much about what you as an individual are doing or not doing, as the effect technology has on the community: Why not make life easier and just put [a phone] in the house? “What would that lead to?” another Amish man asked me. “We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a tel…
Read More…t of daily life, that “exception” can end up swallowing the rule. Romania: European Court of Justice takes up marriage case; opponents push for referendum The European Court of Justice has begun to examine a case brought by Adrian Coman, a Romanian man seeking legal residency for his American husband, which the New York Times’ Kit Gillet says “will have major implications for the legal recognition of same-sex relationships across Europe.” Coman an…
Read More…onfidence that wants their country to be a player in the world. Unless the European Union recognizes that, and accords Turkey a place respectful not of where it is, but where it has been, and where it could go, no political process would work. And if current European Union citizens seem disinclined to accept Turkey, then that too is their right—a meaningful political union cannot be founded merely on economic ties. But it’s another point that’s mo…
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