Religion Dispatches
…t each man started a movement that “nearly changed the world.” He says the most about Hitler, admitting the similarities of the gathering of brown shirts in a Munich stadium in 1939 to the gathering in Anaheim. But this is the very moment where we must be careful, and listen to him more carefully. Warren noted, with obvious moral distress, that the people from that long-ago stadium formed an enormous sign that said, “Hitler, we are yours.” At the…
Read More…l. Those are important points, but they all overlook what is, perhaps, the most troubling aspect of this mini-scandal: it fits within a growing pattern of elite non-Muslims misappropriating Islamic phrases and insisting that the most extreme interpretations or uses are the correct ones. Think about the term “jihad.” It’s one of the most abused and misused terms of its kind. The vast majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims understand the concep…
Read More…ange… Cultures do not change as easily as political affiliation, alas. And most of the current discussion misses the mark in some profound ways. The questions concerning what this means for the future of the Republican Party are premature, at least in the terms currently posed. For the embittered leadership of the Republican Party, Specter’s was a personal decision with absolutely zero broader electoral implications. That is and is not the case, s…
Read More…Law School, served for two years as a Bush appointee drafting some of the most controversial memoranda laying out the arguments whereby torture techniques—from water-boarding, to sleep-deprivation, to the introduction of fear-inducing insects into holding cells—could all be justified, especially at some future point of dire emergency (frequently termed the Ticking Time Bomb or TTB). Those memos have been roundly criticized by much of the legal es…
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…oss the board, is speech designed to incite behavior in others that will almo*]}*st surely become more unruly and even violent. In this context, then, the president elevated all of us simply by elevating and depolarizing the collective discussion of these events. He was clearly moved by them, as he was moved by the spirited energy in that university field house. But the decision to deploy the image of innocent childhood at the end of that speech seeme…
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…s. Natural and human disasters abound, always. So there is a necessary, if mostly unstated, art of reading that lies at the heart of these artful and apocalyptic musings upon certain select scriptures. How then to read them well? These texts are believed to be encrypted texts, as it were; texts that offer up subtle clues about the history of the world, from Christ’s Crucifixion right up to his Second Coming. The Holy Spirit is believed to have emb…
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…spices positively exploding into an orgiastic display of midsummer colors. Most all of the storefronts were painted in rainbow patterns that beautifully set off the gardens. It was the summer solstice. And it is the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots that symbolically announced the birth of a gay rights movement in the United States, rights for a community that would no longer be ignored. Quite suddenly, coming out of the closet meant hit…
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…se, WI (his home diocese) from 1995-2004. He was elevated to Archbishop of St. Louis in 2004 before Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI summoned him to Rome to serve as prefect of the Vatican’s Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority in the Catholic Church (apart from the pope himself). He clashed early on with Pope Francis, expressing his displeasure in numerous media outlets with the agenda of the Pope’s synod on the f…
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…personal piety. In a historical moment when evangelicalism is battling its most significant identity crisis since the Scopes Monkey Trial, the opportunity to celebrate “one of the good ones” is all the more enticing. Graham is being remembered for eschewing the trappings that brought numerous other popular evangelists down. He will also be remembered for his close ties with numerous U.S. Presidents, exerting an influence over some of the most powe…
Read More…onstitute a museum (and a tourist destination). But of Easter, there was almo*]}*st nothing to see in this nominally Catholic region of an emphatically Catholic country. Breakfasting on Saturday morning in the pueblo, I asked our hosts if there were a festival of any kind that evening. “For what?” they asked, perplexed. “Easter,” I replied. They shrugged casually and returned to the kitchen. The next morning, I asked them where the church was; they di…
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