Religion Dispatches
…the norm outside of the mosque. Unlike Europe, in America, Muslims do not live in ethnic ghettos. While there are class distinctions, Muslims live every where from the most wealthy neighborhoods to the poorest, not by religion but by class. It is less common, for example, for immigrant women to come to the US and know little or no English after two and three decades, for example. It happens but because the other networks of support services are w…
Read More
…rk Israelite community, had begun to work with the Schomburg Center of the New York Public Library to collect papers from a dozen or so Black Israelite synagogues. I wrote an honors thesis on a small part of that collection, and then returned in graduate school to use the rest. Working towards my doctorate at UCLA I was fortunate enough to study Black Atlantic religions with Donald Cosentino, and African American and West Indian histories with Bre…
Read More
…e race, noting Trump’s endorsement of a senate candidate. Both CNN and the New York Times will add wonkiness, highlighting a Trump pledge to end taxes on tips for hospitality workers, as if policy had brought the thousands out screaming for Trump in triple degree sun. The proper political press rarely pays much attention to Trump’s warm-up acts. But the openers are the unregulated id of a Trump rally, messier expressions of the main event, demonst…
Read More
…ly, frequent church attendance correlates not with lower, but with higher Trump support. A new report by PRRI now confirms the trend with respect to the broader phenomenon of Christian nationalism, the preferred ideological vehicle for evangelicals’ pervasive authoritarian attitudes. The report, “A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture,” divides Americans into Christian nationalism ad…
Read More…presidency), Fox News has sabotaged him time and time again by suggesting that despite his own profession of Christianity, President Obama is not really Christian, but rather Muslim—quite a crime, in the eyes of Fox viewers. Now, as Mitt Romney runs for president, Fox News is sabotaging him by suggesting that despite his own profession of Christianity, Romney is not really Christian either. Because when Fox News says “Christian,” Fox News means “…
Read More
…han during events last year—not in content, of course, it’s still the same politics of cruelty, but energized now that he has the goal of 2024 to work towards. And while some attendees had expressed interest in a DeSantis ticket in conversations earlier in the day, the ecstasy that swept the room when Trump appeared on stage felt different than even some standing ovations other candidates got. The crowd moaned and booed when he declared that “the…
Read More
…eaching become untenable? Will my job be filled by a computer? Will robots rule the world? While these questions may not quite seem apocalyptic, the fear they express echoes Sam Altman’s comment. From fountain pens to movable type, major technological advances always precipitate crises. At the time, the looming change seems to threaten our way of life. But, in hindsight, the changes are drained of their emotional charge and often appear to have al…
Read More
…sputes and tensions that each and every one of us have to navigate as we struggle to communicate with, live with, and govern with one another. As democratic citizens we all have to ask ourselves: What is fundamental? And who decides? In a deliberative democracy, compromise is a value, but for hardliners it is often viewed as a character flaw. Many of us think of fundamentalists as people who can’t be reasoned with, which is a problem for democrati…
Read More
…ia would tell us, leads to nothing less than the obliteration of the known world. God-Management Systems? Two new works of progressive theology, whose nearly identical titles both appear to advocate an undoing of the tzimtzum, might therefore be greeted with trepidation: It’s Really All About God by Samir Selmanovic, and Everything is God by Jay Michaelson. Beneath the covers of these books, which are also remarkably similar in design (the word “G…
Read More…zzFeed’s Lester Feder and Anton Lysenkov examine the history of a Latvian crusader against “gay propaganda” and that campaign’s reflection of the struggle between Latvians who look to Europe and those who are seeking the patronage of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Norway: Anti-Equality Forces Gaining Strength in Norwegian Church, Both Sides Organizing A commentary by Hanne Skartveit published in Norway last week suggests that changes in the chu…
Read More