Religion Dispatches
…omney’s now-well-documented social stiffness and penchant for ill-timed, inappropriate jokes, you could call him “awkward,” “stiff,” “robotic,” “wooden,” or “uncomfortable.” All of that would be perfectly fine. But “weird” (a word that has its roots in the Old English “wyrd” for “fate” or destiny”) has always carried a tinge of the occult or otherworldly. And that’s why we all heaved a sigh of relief when David Axelrod came on television to threat…
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…fy the participants in the ethnography hidden behind invented names. I was approached by congregants I had little communication with before, who suddenly discovered I was a “serious” guy. It seems some had been suspicious about the presence of an anthropologist among them, and I kept on a modest profile trying to avoid much attention. There were also a few who discovered earlier my ethnography about the Israelis in Queens (the “Yordim”) which was…
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…l’s frustration with people who might use “spiritual but not religious” as code for “I don’t really think about religion at all because it’s boring or difficult or irrelevant to my pursuit of self-interest.” One statistician of religion suggests that America is well on its way to becoming a nation of “310 million people with 310 million religions,” each tailor-made to suit themselves. As someone who has made a career out of the life of the mind, a…
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…when applied to homosexuality, unhealthy. For our community, “change” is a code word for repression, distortion, and fear. So LGBT people must either abandon repentance or queer it. If we are not to reject it, we must make it our own, make it more complex, set aside its oversimplifications. The good news is that this is a gift to everybody else. Total surrender to heteronomous ethics is unhealthy, period. It may be prescribed by some, but it is al…
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…ility of meaningful dialogue. Which, in fact, is the very awareness Gordis appears to lack. After seeing my comment, Rabbi Gordis contacted me through Facebook and we had a private conversation. He was, as one can imagine, very upset at my use of the term “fascist.” In a previous personal message sent to me the day before he read my accusation, he acknowledged our differences and asked if I wanted to have a conversation. I replied I would be happy…
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…linear terms that might make some sense. First, the objection: this never happens. Find me one example of when a short-term protest movement led to a long-term paradigm shift. Such shifts happen gradually, over time. “Occupy” movements are for short-term change. My prediction is that Occupy Wall Street will peter out once the snow starts falling in earnest. Bloomberg et al. just have to wait. No one’s going to camp out in Zuccotti Park when it’s t…
Read More…ave endorsed the measure. It proposes to redefine the basic word “person,” applying it to fertilized eggs. The goal of this mischief, as many have noted, is to outlaw all abortions with no exceptions—even for rape or incest, or when a woman’s life is in danger. This would mean that, in Mississippi (or the several other states like Florida and Ohio that are drafting similar measures) it will be safer to be a fertilized-egg-person (FEP) than a woman…
Read More…e different organizations that serve LGBT/SGA Mormons to explore different approaches to LDS homosexuality: Affirmation, the nation’s oldest organization of gay Mormons, North Star and Family Fellowship. The Circling the Wagons conference will feature Jimmy Creech, a former United Methodist Church minister defrocked for marrying LGBT couples, as well as LDS LGBT ally Carol Lynn Pearson. Utah State University professor Renee Galliher will present t…
Read More…cigarette and a beer (both forbidden according to the LDS Church’s dietary code, “The Word of Wisdom”), more substantial coverage this week is focusing on Romney’s service as bishop of his LDS congregation in Belmont, Massachusetts in the 1980s. On Monday, the Washington Post offered a revealing account of Bishop Romney’s interactions with Boston’s robust Mormon feminist community during tense years for the movement, when the LDS Church played a…
Read More…s for Ron Paul, whose campaign dismissed the Trump debate as “beneath the office of the Presidency and flies in the face of that office’s history and dignity.” Televangelists have offered presidential candidates many circuses, from Huckabee’s appearances on Copeland’s program, to Rick Perry’s prayer rally last August, to John McCain’s short-lived dalliances with Hagee and Rod Parsley. Trump’s indulgence is just the latest iteration of the same ven…
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