Religion Dispatches
…his arms. Ophiuchus has long been part of sidereal astrology (dominant in India, among other places), but absent from the traditionally twelve-signed tropical system most popular with American newspapers until now, with the revised map of the night sky and its influence on human destiny. Just as the revision of the Zodiac had induced popular outcry—people who had long self-identified as melodramatically emotional Pisces were suddenly told, for in…
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…to me. I have never returned to Iran. Sometimes it saddens me that I know India, Thailand, and other countries better than the place of my birth. I have never smelled the air at the Caspian Sea or walked through the bustling streets of Tehran. I have spent my academic career documenting the stories of immigrant Iranians as a way mitigating the absence of a country that is a part of my life, my culture, the language that I speak, and the food that…
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…as an admittedly checkered but often positive history. The immigrants from India, Pakistan, Brazil, and Ireland I talked with while writing this book are potential partners on all sides of the political spectrum. They ultimately care much more about the bread and butter issues like family, community, and jobs that most of us care about. Anything you had to leave out? Lots. It’s impossible to capture the complexity of people’s everyday lived religi…
Read More…shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.” It’s amazing how imperialism and racism are so closely intertwined and persistent, and always under a veneer of civilization. I know Harris thinks he is being original and provocative, but at best he is being derivative and puerile. I am more shocked that Sullivan, with his awareness of British history, not only did not see the connection, but gave it a s…
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…f great moral courage. Drawing from earlier scriptures, the fourth-century Indian Buddhist master Asaṅga speaks of a threefold classification of “giving” that includes giving material goods, spiritual counsel, and life. Of these three, Asaṅga considers offering up one’s life to be the highest form of giving. That said, Indian and Tibetan texts also set forth stringent conditions that must be met before an individual is allowed to offer up his or h…
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…against his life he would not be attending the Jaipur Literature Festival, India’s premier showcase of Asian literature. Rushdie hid for 11 years after Khomeini’s 1989 public call for his death, only emerging in 2000. Now in 2012 he is threatened again. Unremarked upon in the recent hullabaloo concerning Rushdie was that only a few months ago a religious edict, or fatwa, was issued against another “blasphemous” Muslim author, Rafiq Tagi of Azerbai…
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…Perhaps there would be fire, smoke, and stench. Graham observed that Gary, Indiana, looked a bit like hell if you peered down from an airplane. But perhaps hellfire was metaphorical. Graham mused, “[Jesus] uses the word fire, and I have often wondered if that is a terrible fire within our hearts for God, for fellowship with God, that can never be quenched. We’ve rejected God. We’ve turned our back on God. We can never know God. … [Hell is] the ban…
Read More…r). To take a somewhat parallel case, Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has promoted an appreciation for Jesus, but not for the Christian theology writ large. After all, a Buddhist would rightly be critical of a system that posits a belief in an essential soul. But where some Catholic voices (and Protestant ones as well) go out of their way to disparage yoga, Thich Nhat Hanh never uses incendiary rhetoric to tell his audience not to become Christia…
Read More…s death, Chau highlighted the motivating force behind his journey into the Indian Ocean: “You guys might think I’m crazy in all this …. But I think it’s worth it to declare Jesus to these people.” There is no end to the commentary on the meaning of Chau’s death. To some, he’s a martyr invoked in the same breath as Jim Elliot and his fellow missionaries who lost their lives in efforts to reach the most remote populations for Christ in Ecuador in 19…
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…drives the money changers from the Temple. For centuries, many temples in India functioned like banks, making interest-bearing loans. Commercialized forms of penance helped inspire the Reformation in Europe. The landscape of American religion is often conceived of as a market in which churches and denominations compete for worshippers. Sales tactics influence evangelists, and companies use religion to push political agendas. Nevertheless, there’s…
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