Religion Dispatches
…cradle of his childhood. Like Eliade, “Dabic” searches in India and other Asian countries for his expertise. And there is also a continuity of identity as there was with Eliade, who remained a historian of religions, whether as a young fascist in Romania or a wide-ranging intellectual in Chicago. “Dabic” too was a psychiatrist, like Karadzic the president-psychiatrist before him, and Karadzic the practicing doctor and poet before him. And “Dabic,…
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…ed from North America to Europe, South America, and the Philippines, met a number of politically powerful Republican politicians and conservative religious leaders, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Iran/Contra figure Oliver North, and then-Senator Rick Santorum. Religious leaders like Charles Stanley (a former distributor), Dr. Robert Schuller and the late Dr. D. James Kennedy of Florida’s Coral Ridge Ministries—a multimedia, m…
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…ration Act of 1924 (instituting a national origin quota system and barring Asian immigration), a rabid anti-Semite whose pro-Nazi American Coalition of Patriotic Societies was indicted for sedition in 1942. The report also detailed Tanton’s admiration for Taylor, noting how he “promoted Taylor’s efforts repeatedly” and encouraged FAIR employees to receive American Renaissance mailings. Leonard Zeskind, author of Blood and Politics: The History of…
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…experiences)—I visited a mosque in Rochester Hills, this one mostly South Asian and Sunni, where I was also able to get some local Muslims’ reactions to TheCall. There was of course concern, and some surprise. Many had heard, but many had not. More of the Muslims were more interested in hearing what it was like to be there. I’d live-tweeted TheCall and issued far too many Facebook updates, so some looked for clarification or explanation of certai…
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…with the visiting candidates, private lunches over inexpressibly wonderful Asian delicacies with the good grey incumbent minister, and potluck suppers when the committee meets to deliberate. Dana/Huneven spikes up foodie fun by ending the novel with 30 pages of selected “search recipes,” including some real-life stunners. So here we have a wise and witty narrator at the center of the action, joined in the search “process” (the word itself is suspe…
Read More…y according to his brother. In the ring, Alam, an American Muslim of South Asian descent, fulfills the stereotype of “Middle Easterners” and Muslims, speaking in fake accented English, shouting in a foreign language (in his case, Urdu), and often entering the ring in robes and kaffiyeh. Alam’s out-of-ring introspection, alluringly captured in Benjamin Kegan’s film, and the fact that he is an open and practicing Muslim, are what make him stand out….
Read More…ir early 20s through their 70s: gay men, mostly, but lesbians too; white, Asian-American, Latino, African-American, and Native Hawaiian. Many served LDS proselytizing missions, raised children, and held positions of responsibility in their local congregations before coming out of the closet. Some have stopped participating in LDS institutional life, while others have continued by walking a carefully negotiated path. Many gay Mormons in attendanc…
Read More…b – and ultimately end – a woman’s right to choose. Miram Yeung, National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (who testified against this bill last year) told me PRENDA will become, “A communication point for those who would end all abortion.” A showpiece. But, because the suspension rules call for a two-thirds majority for passage, Yeung remains hopeful the bill won’t pass, “It could work in our favor as two-thirds would mean they [Republicans]…
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…unable to identify with Serra. It’s that yet again a European subject has been elevated at the direct cost of attention to African, Asian, Native, and mixed-race voices….
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…ryone sees Christianity from their own vantage point, whether it be Black, Asian American, Latinx, queer, genderqueer, disability, or some other, or especially some combination, and the work of the contextual theologian is to harvest the insights available from such perspectives. This is the theology for liberal multiculturalists, and it is even palatable to some secularists. With the ambitious enterprise of Black theology reduced to a vestigial i…
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