Religion Dispatches
…slavery.) And what about secret paganistic societies with odd behind-closed-doors rituals? That too is classic Americana—just as American as the Freemasons. What really breaks the good Christian folks code of conduct is not engaging in questionable behavior but rather exposing the indiscretions of other good Christian folks, especially after they get established and powerful….
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…in 100 years.” It isn’t a stretch to say that his invocation of “truth” is code for conservative Christian dogma; his real problem with Harvard—and academia in general—is that its scholars do not defer to such dogma. But there’s no need to stretch as Santorum explicitly linked higher education to the work of Satan in a 2008 speech (which has recently gone viral) at Florida’s Ave Maria University. The intimate connection between these views and his…
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…eveloping charismatic and photogenic representatives of the lifestyle they promote. To this end, VF creates a beautiful glossy catalogue populated with high quality photographs of [the] Phillips children and friends in romantic historic costumes and settings: Jamestown, the Massachusetts Bay Colonies, and the Wild West. In these images, and generally in the literature and stories of Vision Forum, gender roles are greatly exaggerated and glamorized…
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…s Toward Food in Late Imperial China.” While Chinese food policy affects a significant percentage of the world population, it seems problematic to present “Chinese food culture” as a monolithic way of life. The piece looks at concepts like the five elements and yin-yang but lacks a specific spiritual context I expected from the piece. The focus of Ping-chen’s writing is not on spiritual food ritual but on medicinal treatments and food remedies. Wh…
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…ry strictures. All along, Christianity tempted at the fringes of his life, signifying not salvation through Jesus but mundane liberation from the obligations of Jewish Orthodoxy. “While my upbringing was defined by what I couldn’t do,” he writes, “it seemed to me that Christian kids had it all. In my eyes, they were wealthy, happy, and able to watch TV whenever they wanted.” His discussion of the young Orthodox bourgeoisie—Jews like himself who he…
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…rings true in her take on it, in a script that crackles and pops with her signature dialogue. She tries to do even more, as she makes clear when she recently described the film as a “Trojan horse” meant to sneak a feminist message into the cineplex, subverting the paradigm of horror films in which women are merely the shrieking victims of male violence. I admire Cody’s effort, but am not sure she has subverted older paradigms as much as made them…
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…ing religious images as universal will help heal culture war divisions and promote the formation of a broad-based progressive coalition. Frederick Clarkson: Thanks for hosting this discussion, Linell. I think these matters are integral to the functioning, the advance, and indeed the survival of Constitutional democracy. But I think that in order to give them the kind of attention they merit in light of the particular challenges of our time, we nee…
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…rch is growing in South America, in sub-Saharan Africa, and is even making significant inroads in the Far East. And what these emerging Catholic populations want is a culturally conservative theology (recall the uproar in these same regions when the openly gay Anglican bishop, Gene Robinson, was confirmed). The code word for most of that uproar is “anti-Modern.” So the irony of Catholic anti-Modernism multiplies, morphs, turns back on itself. The…
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…leased in mid-May. Angels & Demons is the successor to 2006’s The Da Vinci Code, which its star Tom Hanks called “just a good story loaded with hooey and nonsense.” Of course, he only has to say that because it’s not true. Everybody knows that despite getting most of his facts wrong, Dan Brown is American culture’s preeminent religious thinker and, in particular, our most trusted interpreter of Catholicism. Even though the Vatican decided to play…
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…ere a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? The DaVinci Code. Now, that’s a profitable reworking of Christian history. I wouldn’t have to worry about paying for my daughter’s college education. Seriously, I wish I could have written Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age. It is one of those magisterial books about history that has become part of history. Books like that happen once in a generation. Sigh. What’s your next book? It is on…
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