Religion Dispatches
…in the “real” physical environment of the player, as mediated through the phone’s camera. As one player told a reporter: “This is full on escapism, where I’m like ‘let me just go catch some Pokémon and ignore the news.’” What news is she talking about? The murders of Sterling and Castile and the Dallas police officers. She is referring to the news of death. But in a matter of days Pokemon Go has changed our relationship with death. This is new te…
Read More…. Randy Berry, the U.S. Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTI People categorically denied this claim last November during meetings with church officials at the Vatican to discuss the persecution of LGBT people globally. The new document, called “Amoris Laetitia,” or “The Joy of Love,” affirms church doctrine that abortion is never justified, that same-sex unions are not “similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and famil…
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…fined as a vagrant. So members always carried five dollars and money for a phone call. Benjamin Zeller, author of Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion, has also noted that Heaven’s Gate members engaged in a lot of self-deprecating humor because they were aware that mainstream society perceived them as crazy. This research led Jones to conclude that a comedy about Heaven’s Gate might not be as inappropriate as it sounds. “I could never make a come…
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…connection, once burning with possibility and joy, began to cool, as cell phone calls dwindled and numbers eventually changed or were disconnected. As our shared realities drifted apart in their likeness, like Pigpen, I also turned to technologies that promised connection to try to tamp down the yearning and temper that sense of loss. #5 : Three Ways to American Beauty by Aaron K. Kerr At the height of secular modernity, when Catholics were openi…
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…didates mean when they support Kim Davis. It’s a perfect debate question because it’s not a religious litmus test such as quizzing candidates on favorite Bible verses, or asking them to describe what their faith has meant to them in their own lives. It’s also a question that cuts to the chase, without clouding an argument about authority with paeans to religious liberty. Here’s the question: do you believe there are any circumstances under which G…
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…invader while she chats about weekend plans with Chris Evans’ Captain America. In cadaver-and-crush films, the protagonists are detectives whose hunt for a killer becomes entangled with their quest for love. “Bones,” the long-running Fox hit, is a textbook case. “Traces of her blood will still be in that cement,” says Dr. Temperance Brennan in the pilot, her face inches from that of Seeley Booth, her crime-fighting partner. Forensics as foreplay….
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…ny kind of alternative way of doing church or being church for younger African Americans. Is it your impression that black millennials, and young activists in particular, are doing their own version of DIY church or are they drawing their spiritual nourishment in ways that have nothing to do with church in any form? There’s certainly a historical precedent for young justice activists finding it impossible to remain inside quiescent religious insti…
Read More…in a phone interview, he said his wife was not a practicing Jew but “ethnically Jewish” because her maternal grandmother was a Jew. Of course, it is possible to express [insert flavor of bigotry here] even if you have friends, relatives, partners, or a spouse who identify as part of [group that is the target of that bigotry]. It’s a close cousin to the “some of my best friends are [insert group]” defense. In this case, Schmitz is making his case…
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…volumes. Levin’s leadership in the nativist movement jumpstarted his political career. The following year he was elected to U.S. Congress. Donald Trump’s recent language has done much damage to our nation’s interfaith relations. We can only hope that his rise as a messianic politician will soon come to an end. Although there are real threats that the Islamic extremists pose, it must be remembered that the overwhelming majority of mass shootings in…
Read More…e a caucus proposed a stop fracking resolution. We spent hours on national phone calls debating when fracking should be stopped. We finally proposed 2030 as the last fracking date. It was a compromise after many “brackets,” what COP21 calls the matters that are kept in that famous parking lot where we put the things we don’t know how to decide. The Synod amended our so-called radical proposal and unanimously passed 2017 as the final date. We were…
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