Religion Dispatches
…ere he codifies into the more marketable slogan “I want Jesus to make me a better Jew.” But what does this mean? “[You] needn’t worry that I might leave Judaism,” he assures his wife (and thereby his reader) toward the beginning of his escapade. “I [have] no intention of doing any such thing.” Thus ensconced within safe parameters, he sets out on a circumscribed journey of self-discovery, like Odysseus tied to the mast so that he can hear, but not…
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…ybe society is to blame, but it’s hard to pin down any concrete connection between social conditions and a given act of terror; while social science identifies patterns, it can rarely tell us where the blame lies in any specific instance. In a recent essay for The Atlantic, criminologist Simon Cottee challenges the idea that we can ever fully understand why someone becomes a terrorist. “Everyone from clerics to caustic cab drivers seems to have a…
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…sts, declining ticket sales and increasingly mixed reviews led to conflict between the various production companies. There’s currently a legal moratorium preventing a fourth installment. Other major studio efforts haven’t cracked the code for commercial success either: Darren Aronofsky’s Noah earned a respectable $100 million, but cost an estimated $125 million to make. Son of God did okay at the box office, grossing $26.5 million its opening week…
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…out? A People’s History covers 2000 years in 350 pages. Maybe it would be better to ask me what I left in. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about your topic? Recently, my eleven-year-old daughter told one of her fifth grade Sunday school classmates that her mother had written a book on church history. He replied, “What’s that about? Killing Muslims and Jews?” That pretty well sums it up—most people think that Christian history is about…
Read More…asking women campaigners to make in accepting this legislation based on a code of practice and please do be prepared to meet us half way as this draft legislation suggests.” On the other side of the aisle, traditionalists in the Church of England are less than pleased with the legislation. Rod Thomas, Bishop of Plymouth and leading traditionalist stated: “This leaves us very clearly with a feeling that our ministry in the church is simply being t…
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…dren is worth getting riled up about. Nor do I mean “Let’s be cautious” as code for “Maybe this isn’t an important question.” To the contrary, it’s a vital question. Yet it’s also an easy question to approach in an unhelpful way. Precisely because sexual abuse is appallingly common, compassionate people look for patterns to explain why it happened in this instance and not that one. And that’s a good thing: abuse prevention means recognizing common…
Read More…only the latest wave of an Islamic ‘tsunami’ sweeping the globe.” Oh, and look! The Brotherhood has learned its tactics from Bill Ayers and Code Pink. Don’t you love living in a fact-free world?…
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…elivered—dissent and approval, femininity and righteousness and pleasure—encoded the proceedings with a special kind of attention, another layer to Supreme Court ritual. Those fabric beacons shone powerfully for those of us who have experienced marginalization, had to code switch from setting to setting, or learned to express ourselves through subtle cues beyond formal language. While it’s not a huge surprise that some of Ginsburg’s collars will r…
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…Christian society and a form of religious politics that will make biblical code the law of the United States. These activists are quite serious about bringing Christian politics into power. Bray said that it is possible, under the right conditions, for a Christian revolution to sweep across the United States and bring in its wake Constitutional changes that would allow for biblical law to be the basis of social legislation. Failing that, Bray envi…
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…legislation in the past, including from churches themselves. Seeking to be better citizens, some churches already voluntarily file or publish a Form 990. The financial obscurity in which American churches operate leads to copious fraud and abuse. Experts believe that the lack of transparency makes religious charities “among the most vulnerable entities.” This void victimizes the faithful—those who willingly give up a portion of their income—more t…
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