Religion Dispatches
…picked up quickly and loaded the dishwasher, I said yes. Then I checked my phone. Like many people, I keep it on silent unless I’m expecting a call, so I missed a called from my youngest daughter. Instead she left a text message. It read: “your hajj packgat came” (sic) I burst out crying. So much so that my other daughter came forward and said, “What’s wrong?!” I couldn’t speak. I just showed her the text message and cried and hugged her. To her c…
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…Those facing prison and financial penalties are the individual rioters, many of whom felt they were there at the explicit invitation of the President. They felt they were justified in attacking the Capitol because they were defending their nation after an election that they were told was stolen. Others were explicitly trying to start a war, mimicking the justification of the Revolutionary War of rebellion against tyranny. Those with the most resp…
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…ubhanallah at such coincidences—and he mentioned in passing how offended many white American Muslims were by this very kind of gesture. On reflection, I can see why. I don’t find racial insensitivity humorous directed at me. The least I can do is not support it. And the least I can do is the least I can do. There are not many white Muslim converts in America, proportionally speaking, and I’m sure sometimes they feel overrun by the preponderance of…
Read More…with a much more fractured community, and the diminished likelihood that anything as cohesive or coercive as full-on Hebraist-Zionism will take root. Today, it’s more a matter of selling something gentle and positive to discriminating consumers, adults as well as children. The problem for the BJE now is not so much irrelevance as redundancy. Other organizations, says CJP, including Brandeis University, the Boston Hebrew College, the congregationa…
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…nt them, nor do comments represent Christianity. If that’s true, why does anyone care about anything Robertson says at all? Judging a public figure’s influence is a tricky business. Sure, bestselling books, sell-out crowds and the like tell you something. You could look at The 700 Club’s Nielsen ratings, or do a public opinion survey on someone’s favorability ratings, or ask other other evangelicals to name their most “influential” brethren. Or yo…
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…hope. For example, when the pope said, in 2022, that God “does not disown any of his children,” or in 2023 that “people with homosexual tendencies are children of God,” a number of LGBTQ Catholics and advocates, myself included, got excited for a day or two—maybe even called our parents (if the Church hasn’t driven a wedge between them and us). But then the news cycle passes and, with each expression of anti-LGBTQ Catholic doctrine on diocesan and…
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…e abuses and begin writing LGBT rights into law. But the signs so far are anything but promising. “I’m not interested,” said Win Htein, one of Suu Kyi’s closest aides, when asked if the government planned to do anything about LGBT rights abuses. He was answering amid bursts of seemingly uncontrolled laughter. “Burma is not like the West. Gender issues are not important,” he said. (The recording of the phone call can be heard at the end of the docu…
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…eet to whom we nod in passing, but with whom we never otherwise engage in any “deeply true” way. Moreover, in the era of mobile technologies, the social isolation previously associated with internet-based communications is radically diminished and, very often, interpersonal intimacy is in fact enhanced. Our use of technology can thus enrich and extend meaningful face-to-face relationships rather than necessarily excluding or otherwise diminishing…
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…on of one’s religious calling, it prevents the government from respecting any establishment of religion. That Tony Perkins wants his government to enforce his worldview and enact his orthodoxy is precisely why that First Amendment was written—to preclude our government from the undertaking. They knew that people like Tony Perkins would gain purchase at times in the marketplace of ideas. They needed something of substance written into our Bill of R…
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…e stylized. The Code had a broader effect of pushing filmmakers “to avoid any overt signs of pain or suffering,” explained Prince. That would have included psychological reactions to violence, as well as more explicit depictions of physical harm. As the influence of the Code waned, and finally collapsed, in the 1960s, violence became more explicit. So did depictions of the emotional and psychological turmoil that can accompany killing. Still, the…
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