Religion Dispatches
…religious blessing. Robinson, Alston, and producer Sandra Itkoff hope Love Free or Die will motivate people to talk to friends and relatives, and will be a resource for getting more “conflicted Christians” to not only open their hearts but also to change their behavior—including voting. The son and grandson of ministers, Alston says religion is his family business: “My life is tied up in that culture.” Alston is the director of Auburn Media, a pro…
Read More…killed the government’s plans for the national vote and called again for a free vote in the parliament. CNN has profiled some of the couples who are waiting, among them a man and woman who pledged four years ago not to marry until their gay friends could. BuzzFeed’s Lane Sainty reports: Many conservative commentators have characterised the LGBTI community as childish, petulant, and anti-democratic for opposing a national vote on marriage. But Grei…
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…s a baby boomer. In the ‘60s and early ‘70s, the media depicted boomers as free-love hippies and anti-establishment rebels, but those eye-catching stereotypes failed to capture the generation’s true ambition. Many yearned for authenticity. They craved experience. They longed to know God and, just as important, for God to know them. Some boomers joined cults. Others went to communes. Still others tuned in, turned on and dropped out. But many stayed…
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…uld loosen the hold of Eastern financial interest over interests rates and free up credit for small businesses and farmers. The Democrats opposed tariffs both as an imposition on the functioning of the free market and as a way to starve the federal government of revenue so it couldn’t do things like expand infrastructure. Throughout much of the 1880s, the Democrats used a series of procedural maneuvers to hamstring Congress, delaying progress on r…
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…vangelical or post-Christian altogether. I want them to know that a bit of free thinking and iconoclasm never hurt anyone, and that God can handle our occasional wrestling against him. He’s not nearly as petty as many of his spokespeople portray him! Are you hoping to just inform readers? Entertain them? Piss them off? I know that my book will be a bit scandalous to those who are theologically uptight, but that’s fine. I spent so much of my life s…
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…ment was the greatest gift. Because he never claimed me as his, I remained free. In the years after I entered the academy, Jacob Neusner never acknowledged or responded to any of my scholarly work, although there were many times when I would have loved a response, any sliver of recognition. But in the end, I was one of the lucky ones. I’ve had a career all my own. Since I left Brown, I’ve been beholden to no one. Without him, I’ve been free to cul…
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…concentrate on—wait for it—sex and marriage-related issues and “religious freedom,” which is also focused on the pelvic zone. And as if to prove how tone-deaf they are, on Sunday the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops kicked off its fourth annual “Fortnight for Freedom” religious liberty extravaganza, which runs through July 4. Surprisingly (for an event that marries an archaic English expression to a vague nod to American Independence and Catho…
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…ual information and sexual representations, and expanded sexual rights and freedoms for most Americans. How that would play out on a Supreme Court with a conservative majority is uncertain. But rights and freedoms that are potentially at stake are concrete and bear directly upon the health of millions of Americans. At its core, Comstockery maintains that individuals cannot and should not be trusted when it comes to sexual and reproductive matters;…
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…y applied set of economic and political policies premised on the idea that free markets secure freedom and flourishing. Within this framework, nation-states ideally serve as subordinate enablers of capitalism as it forges a renewed multicultural village. This is the subtext for advertising campaigns that advance a not-so-subtle message that conspicuous consumption initiates subjects into an avant-garde multicultural global public. In a context in…
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…advantage of the crisis to restructure the economy in favor of the radical free market. It was this period—the end of the 1960s and early 1970s—when the business community embarked on a war of ideas to take back the country from the “radicals” who had been undermining faith in the free market. One of their targets for conversion was the country’s religious leadership. Using both the carrot (invitations to all-expenses paid weekend retreats where t…
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