Religion Dispatches
…nt, not just a crazed loner, not just an evil assassin, but of the basest, most naked racism. Yet I’m sure there will be the doubting Thomases of what motivated the murderer of Pinckney and his fellow worshipers. There will be those who pin it on evil or mental illness but will balk at naming terrorism or racism. They will be reluctant to talk about South Carolina’s abiding affection for the Confederacy, not just on Dylann Roof’s Facebook page but…
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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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…could be defined 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…
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…eneral. I think if you listen to that small, still voice, you end up being moved more toward a life of compassion and you have less of a need to impress upon others some very rigid understanding of reality. If you’re humbling yourself in an attempt to listen to God, I don’t think you can do that. I think the two are mutually exclusive. I think if you’re railing against others for their practices because they don’t line up with your beliefs, then y…
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…kmon of Florissant, Missouri, one of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement. The other, The Rev. Damond Jackson of Tempe, Arizona said, “John Dorhauer is a person of privilege in the world we live in, but he has used his white, heterosexual, male power to lift those who live in the world of no-communication, the world of the unheard.” “Here I am, a gay, black male, born and raised in the South,” Jackson continued, “and John sought me out….
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…zz off is the movie’s sappiest moment by far, a recognition that they have more in common than they want to know. They’re women in a man’s world, making it their own world, and having a wonderful time on the way. But should they be? Boyanov is cruelly honest, and fetching for it: She knows what she wants and says what she thinks—which is what we’re thinking—though we lack the courage (or liquid assets) to. Cooper discovers her inner strength, and…
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…s that we need to have a full understanding of what is going on in the enormous cosmos. Possibilianism is an active exploration of different hypotheses. That’s what science is all about. The scientific temperament is a tolerance for holding multiple ideas in mind at the same time, and then gathering evidence to find support in favor of some of the ideas over others. I just feel like the [question] Is there God or no God? is too limited for a moder…
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…n a new mountain to give a new interpretation of the law and that’s the Sermon on the Mount. You’ve got all of these Moses stories and they make such an incredible pattern that people can understand, and they know this is not literal. But, the opposite of not being literal is not that it’s not true. The opposite of literal is to be interpretive. If you can bring people into an interpretive view of the New Testament instead of a literal view then y…
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…istencies, but useful features? I’m very open to Christian transhumanists, Mormon transhumanists. I mean, yes, I might argue against them in my articles but there’s no way that we would ever say they couldn’t be a part of the party. We want to be as open and transparent as possible, so I may moan and complain in my stories, but it’s an open-arm party—so they’re welcome if that’s the way they want to do it. This is a secular-minded party, and so if…
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…out of place in a society where war seems less and less about bodies, and more and more about minds. Trauma Town In the past decade, it has become more difficult to ignore the psychological toll of violence. Effective activism, shifts in media coverage, and changing public perceptions of mental health have probably all played a role in this shift. But the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have also been the first major American wars during which…
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