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…
Read More…an seeking ordination as a Reformed Christian minister, this was the first time I had returned in more than 30 years. Speaking only in Spanish, the pope’s homily touched upon the damage native people suffered through the system of missions that Junipero Serra help found. “The Church, the holy People of God, treads the dust-laden paths of history, so often traversed by conflict, injustice and violence, in order to encounter her children, our brothe…
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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…
Read More…as well. The group was not armed; the lieutenant governor and the mayor of Hawaii Island did not support the emergency decree or the arrests; and the international consortium agreed to a delay. Overarching cultural values, aloha and ohana, united all Hawaiians. The protesters have now allowed workers to pass through their blockade of the main road up the mountain to service the thirteen telescopes whose operation was interrupted for four weeks. Fo…
Read More…ma’s own history. Here is a man who spent his formative years—the first 17 years of his life—off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa. Because, as we all know, Hawaii isn’t America? Apparently not. And Obama doesn’t understand the founders’ intentions: A good way to discern what motivates Obama is to ask a simple question: What is his dream? Is it the American dream? Is it Martin Lut…
Read More…searched. Whenever I would enter in Indonesia, having done so at least 15 times in the year and half I lived there, I could see the computers as the passport is swiped and it reads “No known alerts.” I still hover over the counter as they swipe, wondering if the “alert” from the US side or the “fatwas” from various parties, will one day appear there and I will be stopped from entry. Once I came into Indonesia when my previous passport had only fi…
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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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…y whose existence seems like some kind of cultural milestone, the New York Times reported on California-born Pakistanti-American Ali Mushtaq competing in the International Mr. Leather competition. The Times’ Erik Piepenburg called Mushtaq’s presence “a big leap out of the pitch-black closet for Muslim men who are not only gay but also into leather fetish.” Issa Arden, a member of the social media team for I.M.L., said that having Mr. Mushtaq compe…
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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…ntisemitic loon who’s been showing up at protests in the New York area for years now. None of them had the ‘human mic.’ None of them were in any kind of non-leadership leadership position. Surely, anyone who knows anything about the protests – which includes 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 J…
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