Religion Dispatches
…onse. In this, only the secular way of death fully honors the dead, where “better place” platitudes betray him. Thomas’ paradoxically titled “Refusal to Mourn” is in fact the refusal to mitigate grief, to paper over the universe’s forever-loss of singular person in guaze-promises of eternity: “I shall not murder/The mankind of her going with a grave truth.” Yes, dying may be harder for the atheist. But what I cannot understand, and reject totall…
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…s place, which is according to legend, the Garden of Eden, now looks like hell,” and the like. Which I always felt to be kind of unfair. Yes, the Garden of Eden story in the Bible is thought by most legitimate scholars to originate in much earlier Mesopotamian legend, which means that the Garden of Eden would be somewhere in Iraq. But—and I admit to a certain literalism here—that early version doesn’t necessarily share the same theology or have th…
Read More…horized places—homes, schools, street corners, campuses, government—where religion wields major power. A few weeks ago, Mattingly criticized RD for running my story on a recently-installed, openly-gay Mormon congregational leader in San Francisco. Get Religion insisted that this story on Mitch Mayne wasn’t really news, and that it was bad journalism to claim that Mayne’s call to serve indicated “evolving” views of homosexuality in Mormonism, becau…
Read More…the country and have decided to remain, or return after a few years away. Between the two groups, the self-understanding of the community becomes defined over and against urban life, for good reasons (wanting a small, caring community) and bad (wanting not to live next to black people). All of this can be dealt with, but change comes slow in rural areas. Think generations, rather than years, much less the lightning pace expected by the wired worl…
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…s of Islam and the West meant some kind of blowback to Salman Rushdie’s novel was likely: The Iran-Iraq War had just ended and the Soviets were retreating from their brutal occupation of Afghanistan. Still, few expected the incendiary outburst that ensued, let alone a violent attempted murder more than 30 years later. Back in 6th grade, I read the book. Not many kids that age would, let alone Muslim ones. But with my mother’s help, I borrowed a co…
Read More…state legislature is a hugely messy example of how the First Amendment’s religious freedom clauses can so often pitted be against each other. The battle began in 2008 in the Santa Rosa school district, which came under fire after two students filed suit with the American Civil Liberties Union who said that “officials regularly promoted religion and led prayer at school events.” According to the complaint, the violations included: such acts as sch…
Read More…view on these issues. Despite Throckmorton’s wish, these groups are not likely to abandon free speech claims as their chief line of defense against the SPLC. The possible squelching of their free speech is the only rational argument they have; even their religious liberty arguments fall short, as they’ve been unable to offer any actual proof that their religious liberty has been vanquished in Massachusetts or Iowa. The free speech claim is the onl…
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…evangelicals have orchestrated a decades-long attempt to legislate their religious beliefs—turning people’s personhood into a battleground for political warfare. They can try to cloak dogma in claims of universal morality or appeals to 17th century English law, but these are specific faith claims they’re attempting to force onto the rest of the country through fascist violence. The only way to implement the social control they’re planning is thro…
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…res and structures with toxic fire-retardant. We have strong, courageous, well-trained and well-disciplined “fighters” in the field being coordinated by a top-down incident command system; and we use many of the same communications technologies and terms to implement tactical field maneuvers. So war talk seems nearly as irresistible to reporters and government officials as is the visual coverage of suppression efforts. When we combine use of the w…
Read More…go, so he quickly and rather inexplicably pivots to claiming that the truly important questions he must answer are actually about economic growth. And here you can see the free association at work: economic growth -> free market. Otherwise known as “teach the controversy,” not the science….
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