Religion Dispatches
…face of horrific attack; it was a mark of a courage and goodness common to New Yorkers of all types on that day and in the months and years that followed. New York University’s Middle East specialists did their part, organizing a panel on Islam, extremism, and world politics within a week or so of the attacks. I went well ahead of the start time, but by the time I got down to campus, the doors were already closed. They’d gotten far more attendees…
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…low-tech social networks, a key, prime question of religion—who are we?—is put in play in new ways. We are left wondering how religious traditions themselves will become more variable as they work, consciously or not, with new media technologies, new formations of family, and new divisions between public and private. Whatever else our variable identities might produce, it is a time of new and potentially reinvigorating “interface” relations….
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…religious and cultural uncertainty. These new Mormon religious communities—new religions really—bring together shifting religious landscapes and anxieties about everyday life in ways that seldom make sense to the casual observer. As the world watched a viral pandemic take millions of lives and struggle to develop medical interventions and preventative measures, much of my Facebook feed took on an air of conspiracy. Specifically, QAnon emerged as a…
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…cially ill-equipped to address transgression. David Ingber, the rabbi who knew Gafni back when he was a leader in the Jewish Renewal movement, has started a change.org petition to put pressure on Gafni’s institutional partners. Ingber told me that Gafni has found “safe haven” in the New Age world, though the problem, he said, would apply to any “highly evolved” community. “In black-and-white communities where morality is conventional and right and…
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…nce of a double standard for abortion facilities; the speed with which the new regulations were handed down and compliance mandated; and the perception that the new regulations are intended to get around federal law), the measure has been controversial. In a recent editorial, the Kansas City Star criticized Governor Sam Brownback for signing the bill, claiming that “[t]he move reflects the same disdain for Kansans that Brownback has shown in other…
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…e were insurmountable. It’s over these boundaries that we’re going to find new friends and new ways of loving God and new ways of engaging God’s reign in the world. That’s where we’re moving and that is frightening to some people who don’t think they can make those leaps. They don’t see women as fully human. They don’t see their gay and lesbian friends as having a personhood from which they can learn or be friends with. Those boundaries remain inc…
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…system simply doesn’t work that way. And in the current economic climate, new arguments against the death penalty have begun to appear in some surprising quarters. A new argument for abolition stems from the cost of the death penalty. Capital trials are almost always longer and more expensive; there are more witnesses in general, and bifurcated trials mean you are getting two trials often for nearly twice the price. The mandatory appeals process…
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…there? You had pointed out the novelty piece, the idea that this is brand-new, and of course we know new religious movements are never wholly new. Everything builds on something else. But the idea that it, specifically Q, doesn’t fit into a really clear broad political trajectory for the last 40 years is either willfully ignorant, or just damagingly naive about the role that politics has been playing in the United States for at least the last 40…
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…itrary process—our selection from the relatively tiny sample of the year’s new texts we saw—and a reflection of the multiple conversations that intersect at New York University’s Center for Religion and Media, which is where I’m writing from. Much is missing from the list—my Islamic and Buddhist authorities let me down—and while Fucked Up’s new album, The Chemistry of Common Life, will probably show up on some “best of” lists compiled by hardcore…
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…he original game designers provided for the creation of additional levels, new characters, new environments, and scripted events. Some of the most popular platforms for machinima are Second Life, Halo, World of Warcraft, The Sims, and even Grand Theft Auto. Because of its self-reflective and journalistic style, Molotova Alva has been dubbed “the first documentary shot entirely in a virtual online platform.” The Second Life avatar who stars in the…
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