Religion Dispatches
…at the construction could cause a rift between it and “even its closest allies.” The United States warned Israel it was sabotaging the peace process; Netanyahu in turn accused it of acting “against American values.” Ah, American values. John Cougar Mellencamp, the Beach Boys, the Benham brothers, and the great red dragon of Revelation as a driver of foreign policy….
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…elen Burroughs argue across some of the most tumultuous decades in African-American history over the responsibilities of churches and the effectiveness of African Americans’ religious commitments in the struggle for liberation. * * * Adele Oltman’s Sacred Mission, Wordly Ambition: Black Christian Nationalism in the Age of Jim Crow (University of Georgia) blooms from a careful, revelatory reconstruction of the spiritual and economic lives of black…
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…me and success, the black gospel choir became synonymous in the mainstream American imagination with the sound of overcoming historical injustice. The Warm Glow of the Gospel Aura Ever since then, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Anglo-American pop culture has been drawn to the use of black gospel choirs as a means of accessing the vast cultural capital associated with this music. When a black gospel choir willingly participates in mainstream American…
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…vid Myers and Naomi Stolzenberg write in their upcoming book, Teitelbaum’s American fantasy; an American shtetl. In the street protests and general political activism in present day Hasidism we may be witnessing yet another iteration of Hasidism’s developing Americanism. While Hasidim have always supported political candidates and voted in relatively high numbers, most of the advocacy was primarily transactional; they supported candidates they tho…
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…ise the biblical creation myth to the level of a universal fact that every American, or at least every American student using Texas textbooks, must accept as truth. On the other hand, some biologists along with neuroscientists, psychologists, and other intellectuals see evolutionary theory and knowledge about the brain as a way to better understand that most basic of religious elements: morality. 8. Sports Values: Where do Americans get their mora…
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…as such, but they show how Judaism is both normative and normatized in the American context. The American Jewish Committee did not have to sponsor them. Even the more recent ”The Original Kings of Comedy,” and “The Original Latin Kings of Comedy,” did not have institutional support of the type Allah Made Me Funny received. Again, I think it was necessary, but where do we go from here? How long can we have institutions propping up our cultural grow…
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…at over 500 pages, The Age of Insurrection: The Radical Right’s Assault on American Democracy 2 is the result of a career spent dredging the swamp of the American Far Right—and with it, nights attending militia meetings, days muddling through White nationalist demonstrations, and countless hours scouring fascist message boards. Through these efforts, Neiwert has built the most incisive, compelling, and accurate look at the Trump movement’s fringes…
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…and barbarians such that, even in 2021, 74% of Republicans and 50% of all Americans agreed with the statement: “Islam is at odds with American values and ways of life.” In other words, to be an American is to be a Christian. Therefore, since Muslims are portrayed as enemies of civilization—i.e. as enemies-of-Christ—a significant percentage of Americans are inspired by Netanyahu’s religious rhetoric, imagining themselves as mutually engaged in def…
Read More…. Congresswoman. He obsessed over her as though she was the main threat to American Jews, while barely mentioning the 11 American lives lost in an antisemitic terrorist attack in Pittsburgh or the fact that more hate crimes are committed against Jews than any other religious group in the U.S. This is an affront, and it should have been addressed by Congress. In fact, it’s more than an affront, it’s a deliberate attempt to skew our sense of reality…
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…ch writes about Vivekananda as though he reflected something mainstream in American culture: “His prescription for life was simple, and perfectly American: ‘work and worship.’” And she claims that Vivekananda’s popularity waned because America’s “baby boomers commandeered the yoga business.” First, Vivekananda was never “popular” in the sense that modern yoga became popularized in the late twentieth century. He certainly gained the attention of a…
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