Religion Dispatches
…Goodstein’s report is to be taken on faith. Five (count ‘em, five) men of varying tones and tempers taking turns providing spiritual support, and mainly over the phone. Because Goodstein’s piece was essentially unsourced, some caution is in order as to even believing that Obama accepts rotating support and counsel from Jim Wallis, Joel Hunter, Otis Moss Jr., Kirbyjon Caldwell, and T.D. Jakes. This crew struck me as a little too Dream Teamy in res…
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…ght of her office to their lobbying efforts against some of the most conservative public officials. Minerva’s episcopal position lends credibility to her progressive insistence that each child be cared for regardless of legal status. Whether preaching in one of her churches or discussing specific cases with Lou Dobbs, she insists that immigration is not about “partisan politics” but of “lifting up a matter of conscience for this country, a moral a…
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…religious movement demanding preferential treatment? RD reached out to Istvan by phone and asked some hard questions about transhumanism as a philosophy and a movement. He may not have won my vote, but Istvan won me over during our discussion of religious subsidies, global warming, and why transhumanism skews white and male. We also explored the spiritual elements of Istvan’s own thinking and debated about whether transhumanism should embrace its…
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…yline repeats this defeat of death: The Matrix, Game of Thrones, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars (the list is probably endless.) But what if this view of life as a war against death can do nothing in the present but feed the fire of fear that’s burning so many of us? What if that old Christian belief that death is the greatest enemy of God has made people so afraid of death that it’s turned them into militants who mindlessly wage an unwinnable…
Read More…ust too dumb to discern? What is strangest about this third installment in Vanity Fair’s Madoff series is how flat it falls in the end. Did Bernie Madoff’s two sons, Mark (aged 45) and Andrew (43), know about the Ponzi scheme that bankrupted some 80,000 investors? If they did not, then which of the above hypotheses best explains their amazing lack of discernment. There is no answer provided in the article, and indeed, there is little sense of how…
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…gratulatory tweet. Both Bhutto and Zia attempted to curry favor with conservative Muslim clerics opposed to Ahmadiyya in order to extend their reigns, but it didn’t work out well for either of them. Bhutto was executed in 1989, and Zia died in a 1988 plane crash rumored to have been an assassination. Yet the anti-Ahmadi laws remain, according to Khurram Ahmad, because “nobody wants to now tackle this beast.” Even to suggest reining in the law can…
Read More…out a woman’s voice being in the mix. Lord knows there aren’t women in the Vatican hierarchy who could provide a balance to the high male clericalism. I also doubt anyone is telling Christopher Hitchens to tone it down. Besides, it is important to remember that many other Catholics are hurt deeply by this. It’s hard to realize the place you looked to for spiritual solace and intellectual vigor, that taught myself and many individuals how to have a…
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…tions—Feucht himself seems to have a higher calling in mind: religious revival. His personal website sells “Revival or Bust” T-shirts, and his social media is chock full of references to the late 1960s “Jesus People” movement that reset the cultural direction of the evangelical church. Lately, his attention has turned to Azusa Street. The New Year’s Eve Let Us Worship schedule includes the normal worship service—this one in a Valencia, California…
Read More…ke of his family. I could care less who he decides to 999. Allowing his private dalliances to become a public spectacle while pretending to tout “family values” is hypocritical. What’s more, Cain may want to rethink all of the things he said about black people being brainwashed into voting for Democrats. He is going to need the solace of the black church to comfort him when he gets off the campaign trail. Somehow, though, I don’t think his church…
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…, most especially once the immediately subsequent generation has too passed away.” We instinctively and quite rightly recoil at the idea that our bodies might not be solely our own while we are still using them. But when it comes to the bodies of the dead, the Vatican’s new instruction is oddly comforting, despite its apparent lack of respect for the wishes of the individual. Insisting on the integrity of the dead body and its burial in hallowed g…
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