Religion Dispatches
…business days. I figured: if they got my visa into the embassy on the same day it arrived, at least ten days were up. Anyway I was too nervous NOT to make contact before the weekend, because, well, I was just nervous, okay? So when I finally got up the nerve to call the tour agency about my visa process, the woman said, “you got the visa, but since your passport was submitted late, we don’t have it back yet, but you got the visa.” !!!! I know she…
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…your help,” Chapman tells us. “Help me get the word out. If enough people buy tickets to The Ledge, Hollywood will have to pay attention.” I scribble in my notebook thinking of the war against family values we’ve had with Hollywood forever in the church. Is Hollywood our ally now? Oh, damn and damn. Who is we’ve and who is our, and why do I use those words so effortlessly? I sigh and look up, only to see a few policemen are in the room. Bomb thre…
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…kepocalypse”: for the first time ever, the event sold out. Scalpers hawked tickets for hundreds of dollars over their purchase price and artists who had been working feverishly to finish their projects but had put off purchasing tickets were left out in the cold. It was a different scene in 1997 when I first came to Burning Man and only waited briefly at the entrance as a “Greeter” cast a cursory glance at my car. But the Greeters’ enthusiastic re…
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…isen in the movie and subsequent Bible study. “Why waste American money to buy their expensive oil when we could have our own cheap oil?” “Why is he trying to make rich people poor?” “How is it right to punish rich people for working hard and realizing the American Dream?” It was late on a Friday night and I was tired, so I half-heartedly responded by explaining that there are other factors to consider in every charged question she’d been armed wi…
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…was caught after the murder, fleeing halfway across the state, he had the phone number of an Operation Rescue leader on his dashboard—the tip of the iceberg in terms of the broader connections he’d built with anti-abortion extremists. The church, Roeder would later testify, emerged as the only place he could find a shot at Tiller, around the elaborate security measures the doctor had learned to follow at his clinic and home. “Justifiable homicide…
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…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 Googl…
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…ans would be attracted to, appreciate and consider careers in science (the number is decreasing annually). I bet we’d have more productive conversation among students and leaders of science and religion around the many profound issues in our nation that engage both: abortion, medical care, stem cells, homosexuality, and genomic research. The battle rhetoric would fade and, more than likely, movies like Expelled wouldn’t be made in the first place….
Read More…es ECI’s leadership – knows this to be the case. Which makes ECI’s video a cheap lie — yet another in a long litany of desperate efforts by the far right to convert the largely liberal American Jewish community to neo-conservatism, hawkish policies on Israel, and the belief that “Barack Hussein Obama” is a Muslim. That said, there actually are two interesting forms of antisemitism going on here. First is the antisemitism of ECI itself. To tug at…
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…rm abortions even on non-viable, life threatening ectopic pregnancies (the number one cause of maternal mortality). Similarly, Louisiana is already moving to pass a fetal personhood bill, which would treat all abortions as homicide punishable by life in prison, including those necessary to prevent the death of the mother. The US has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world already, and these bills will only drive it higher. The eth…
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…g the trend of traditional conservatives or libertarians—what amounts to today’s centrists—identifying as “classical liberals.” No one who appeared there has even the slightest chances of a political career or even comeback in today’s GOP. And while Pence, Tim Scott and DeSantis—who’ve all spoken at CPAC in previous years—were indeed guests at an event hosted by the anti-tax advocacy group Club for Growth, an influential player in Republican polit…
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