Religion Dispatches
…g days at work. On Wednesday and Thursday he saw more than twice the usual number of patients at his abortion clinic, Aid For Women, in Kansas City, Kansas. But then, this has been an unusual few weeks. Since mid-June, Dr. Yeomans (and the other abortion providers in Kansas) have found themselves scrambling to see as many patients as possible before today; as of July 1, these facilities will not be able to offer abortion services until they show…
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…arians how to do so. I liked God in America and will use portions of it in class for years to come. [Full disclosure: I was interviewed a few times by the show’s producers—once in person and several times by phone—and gave them some advice on what kinds of material I would like to see included.] But I do want to ask what this series would look like if we also understand American religious history to be about coercion and authority? Most of God in…
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…xious and afraid, might gather for help. The subways were closed, and cell phone service had gone out. I had no other idea how to find my friends, no idea where else to go. At the very least, I thought I had a responsibility to the Muslim students on campus. (Then again, I really had no idea what to do. I just thought I had to do something, anything, to help.) Walking into our prayer space, which was located inside a Catholic church, I saw a frien…
Read More…example of their promotion of intelligent design in public school science class, see their 1999 booklet Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curricula: A Legal Guidebook. Also, in the case of Dover, Discovery initially sent pro-ID DVDs, such as Signature in the Cell, to school board members. But when it looked like the case was headed for a First Amendment trial that they would inevitably lose, they dropped back to urging board members to…
Read More…and within days an official at LDS Church headquarters placed a concerned phone call to Melanie S.’s local clergy. Three times her bishop met with Melanie to discuss the video. Because she had affiliated with “Mormons for Marriage,” he questioned whether or not Melanie and her husband should be allowed to keep their temple recommends—certificates that allow the most worthy and devoted Mormons to participate in the faith’s sacred temple rites. Nor…
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…etimes communication technologies facilitated that friendship (a letter, a phone call). In the new age the structure is reversed as friendships are built upon those very communication technologies. We are now databases, plugged into a network. Face-to-face friendships have become interface friendships. A more ethereal ethernet was evoked in Inception. Here too people are linked to each other through a social network, and here too identities are…
Read More…as a compromise, a letter to the Washingtonians… To the moderate political classes, religious leaders, and activists who are tempted after the Republican gains in the 2010 midterms to call for more compromise, civility, and government sensitivity to the plight of “the least of these”: Late in the year 2000, I stayed up late into the night watching election returns. The hope for a Gore presidency went down hard, like sparks struck from a flint. At…
Read More…me in the SPR threw themselves behind a new contraption called the “psycho-phone” through which the inventors claimed to be hearing the voices of angels. The psychophone no doubt sounds absurd, but I can’t say that it sounds much more far-fetched than a transcranial magnetic stimulator. Both demonstrate the enduring cultural impulse toward techno-theologizing. However much neuroscientists might want to forswear an interest in the metaphysics of th…
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…suade you from reading Anthea Butler’s new book. Butler writes about lower class African-American Pentecostal women, a sadly understudied group. Focusing on the experience of sanctification, and the concomitant “dedication to both spiritual practices and temporal obedience,” Butler looks at how belief shaped these women’s understanding of self, community, and God, enabling them to “negotiate for and obtain power” in ways that defied expectations f…
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…lly non-Muslim scholars who broke open the field. I remember the thrill of buying the book Islamic Homosexualities edited by Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe in 1996, when I was a graduate student at Duke University and had recently accepted Islam. It was the first book that addressed the topic, though admittedly it was from an anthropological perspective that showed great naiveté and even ignorance about Islam as a religious tradition. Still, it ex…
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