Religion Dispatches
…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…
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…r with duct tape.” In truth, opening a business in Manhattan isn’t exactly cheap. And MNDFL offers a range of class times and options that few temples or nonprofit meditation centers would be able to match. For yoga practitioners, the story here might sound familiar. A spiritual practice, fresh from the exotic Orient, becomes popular among American elites, and adapts itself to the world of for-profit fitness instruction. You might say that MNDFL i…
Read More…slogans about immigration reform. On line I heard that parishes with large numbers of undocumented immigrants had received many tickets. No outside food or water, statues, gifts or selfie sticks were permitted. Despite 10,000 folding chairs, most of us would have no choice but to stand. Once in my appointed place behind the last row of seats, I found myself in a community of fellow pilgrims, lottery winners from local parishes, nearby colleges, an…
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…ualism is bad. Also, he notes but offers no explanation for the decreasing number of marriages in many countries. I am glad to see that in Section 34 he understands this basic fact of contemporary western culture: The ideal of marriage, marked by a commitment to exclusivity and stability, is swept aside whenever it proves inconvenient or tiresome. The fear of loneliness and the desire for stability and fidelity exist side by side with a growing fe…
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…andfather 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 Google’s pastoral power can heal colonialism’s wounds—resembles cultural tropes that have been central to US for…
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…—1 John 4:18 “There is no fear in love.” That really says it for me, each time. Is my basic life stance fear, or is it love? When the empire chooses fear, and feeds on it, what will it take to choose love, personally, and collectively? That Twilight Zone episode mentioned above ends with the following epilogue: The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitude…
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…Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and Garry Wills among others. Go to top Searching for Zion Emily Raboteau Grove Press 2014 Searching for Zion by Emily Raboteau (2014) – One of the most astute accounts from the past decade examining how race and religion intersect, Emily Raboteau’s Searching for Zion follows the author as she asks what exactly “home” means for those living in the worldwide African diaspora. Following a visit after college to a c…
Read More…n selfish, slow to help the poor and needy around me, hesitant to give from my own abundance. If Joel Osteen is honest, he would see that while he is indeed living man’s best—and is a role model for worldly success—his ministry is woefully lacking when measured against “God’s best.”…
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…our intimate relationship with the industrialist drumbeat that is standard time. Timekeepers call central clocks “master clocks,” and others “slave clocks.” Through Thompson’s lens, these expressions look all too descriptive. It’s a potent analysis. Standard time does allow for new negotiations between individuals and groups. It allows authority figures to shape the schedules of people—to make them, in a word, disciplined. Often, that discipline c…
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…st, whereas Vermont—known to be a liberal state—clocked in with the lowest number of both Internet porn searches and religiosity. Just knowing the number of conservatives in a given state was enough information for the researchers to accurately predict the extent of pornography searches using key words including sex, gay sex, porn, free porn, XXX, and gay porn. These findings held true even after the researchers controlled for other demographic va…
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