Religion Dispatches
When it comes to abortion politics—and now contraceptive politics—each side has its favorite demon. Whether it’s the Planned Parenthood Federation of America or the Catholic hierarchy—and increasingly the Catholic health care system—advocates do their best to make the other look as bad as possible, interpreting all events through a glass darkly. (In both cases, curiously, the two ‘demons’ are actually very popular; Planned Parenthood admired as a…
Read More
This story was widely debunked weeks ago, and yet it persists. Hovering at #2 on the Snopes.com “Hot 100” list of the most-circulated hoaxes, this one takes the form of a Facebook post by CEO Mark Zuckerberg (and, ahem, spells his name incorrectly). Seen it on your feed lately? It states that Facebook is instituting a “No Religion” policy, whereby “anyone spreading religious beliefs” will have their account shut down and be subject to “investigat…
Read MoreUpdate: The video, which went viral thanks to Buzzfeed, has boosted Aslan’s book sales considerably. According to the New York Times: On Friday, “Zealot” was in the No. 8 spot on Amazon.com, the nation’s biggest seller of books; by Sunday, it had hit No. 1. Random House is rushing to meet the surge in demand for the book. On Monday, the publisher ordered 50,000 copies, bringing the total to 150,000 copies in print by the end of the week. *** Cre…
Read MoreWorld Vision Commitment to ‘Biblical Marriage’ Focused on Gays, Not Divorce Last week we wrote about the decision by World Vision’s American branch to allow the hiring of legally married gay Christians and its quick reversal after a wave of attacks on the decision by conservatives. Nathaniel Frank describes his unsuccessful efforts to get World Vision to explain how its renewed commitment to “Biblical marriage” can be seen as anything other than…
Read MoreOn April 1, Jake Rush, a conservative congressional candidate from Florida, was outed for his involvement in vampire role-playing games. The story, which was apparently spread by supporters of his opponent, incumbent Ted Yoho, accused Rush of living a “bizarre double life” and dropped plenty of choice words like “ritual,” “occult,” and “Satanic.” Unfortunately for Yoho’s supporters the appeal to moral panic may have backfired. Rush released a st…
Read MoreIn Noah Darren Aronofsky has crafted a provocative cinematic midrash weaving the stories of Genesis and stories from the book(s) of Enoch set in an antediluvian Iron Age. Midrashic commentary traditionally fills spaces in scriptural stories, asking questions of the text, and answering those questions. Aronofsky’s choices create a new interpretation of the story of Noah—neither a good nor a bad thing in itself. Some will care that the movie deviat…
Read MoreMitt Romney’s delusional 2012 pollsters got nothing on apologists for last week’s Pew Poll that found no real “Francis effect” from the pope’s first year. According to Daniel Burke at CNN.com in a lengthy, mostly anecdotal piece, “there’s more way than one to measure the pontiff’s influence” than, say, actual metrics like the number of people going to mass or returning to the church. According to Burke, you just have to “ask around” Boston to fin…
Read MoreThe new year dawns with more LGBT people than ever before living in states and countries that recognize marriage equality. But, thanks to the Supreme Court in India, this year also begins with more LGBT people living in countries that declare them and their relationships to be illegal than at the same time last year. The conservative Catholic Family & Human Rights Institution (C-FAM) is celebrating resistance to LGBT equality and reproductive ch…
Read More
The scene opens in a bustling restaurant in Delhi, where a young woman leans in close to her grandfather, whose eyes sparkle with memories of his childhood in Lahore, Pakistan. He points to faded photograph of two young boys: “This is me. And this is Yusuf.” Every evening they flew kites together, before stealing jhajariyas from the sweet shop owned by Yusuf’s family. A harsh reality interrupts these wistful recollections: “When partition came, w…
Read More
Unless you have been completely unplugged from all forms of media for the last week, you’ve probably seen—or at least have heard or read about—the interview that religion scholar, Reza Aslan, gave on the FoxNews.com webcast, “Spirited Debate”—or as Buzzfeed put it, “The Most Embarrassing Interview Fox News Has Ever Done.” If you haven’t had the chance to see it, or if you aren’t able to watch it now (below, right), here’s what happened, briefly….
Read More