Religion Dispatches
…ing will begin: Did the nomination of the Alaska governor help or hurt the ticket? Did playing solely to the base—religious conservatives in particular—limited the ticket’s appeal? Does the Party have to become more mainstream, more inclusive, and more tolerant? Is Palin to be the Party’s savior? Or, have the American people learned more than enough about some of the less-than-ethical ways she goes about her business? Everyone will have an opinion…
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…s happening in that space where Alland set up his camera. What’s your next book? My next book will describe polyculturalism at a larger scale, and is inspired by African American Islam and the long and rich history of representing Islam in American popular culture. While there are extensive literatures on enslaved African Muslims and twentieth century American Black Muslim movements, my next book explores new ground by documenting the prevalence o…
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…rive and shine and be her biggest self in the world. I was on a panel at a book fair once with a rabbi and a priest, and the rabbi started going after people who call themselves “spiritual but not religious.” He said that it was taking the easy way out to leave institutional religion, that faith is like a marriage—maybe there are parts of it you don’t like, but you have to stay and work through those parts. I was so annoyed when he said that, so f…
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…Israeli left has always been more critical of the Israeli government than American Jews. “I think American Jews continue to still have a desire and a belief and a strong sense that Israel is a land of peace and does want peace,” said Grater. He added that American Jews have “blinders,” and that “we have a hard time believing” that “this great country that’s been a dream of our ancestry for thousands of years really might be doing things we disapp…
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…is. She is not the two-dimensional church foe painted by her critics. The book offers women a first-aid kit for souls damaged by the routine misogyny in the institutional church. I want them to know they are not alone. I have no idea whether church leaders will ever read the book, but my afterword addresses the consequences for Catholicism if the sharp decline in the participation of young women in Catholicism continues. The church will lose wome…
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…w tweaks, Buddhist practices of mindfulness meditation fit right into this American tradition. Since the 1970s, Americans have used quiet, awareness-based contemplative practices to calm and focus their minds. Much of this is thanks to Jon Kabat-Zinn, the creator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), an eight-week course. Kabat-Zinn studied mindfulness meditation under the Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh, but he has emphasized the psychological a…
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…count of Miracles, Angels, and Life Beyond This World (Tyndale, 2010). The book offers a remarkable account of what heaven is like, with the promise that many (but not all) of us will make it there. But as news outlets have widely reported, Alex has publicly announced that he made it all up. The Boy Who Came Back is a vast collection of impressions of heaven, a twenty-first century form of the literature that’s been around for over two thousand ye…
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…a story about what manliness has meant, how men have imagined their own manliness and the manliness of other groups, and why these varieties of manliness matter for Judaism. Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism Sarah Imhoff Indiana UP March 2017 What’s the most important take-home message for readers? Neither gender nor religion is ahistorical. Neither is a constant across time and space. People use the things around them to construct th…
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…Dead. When I was in college, back in the early 1700s, I’d put their album American Beauty on whenever I was stressing out. It always helped….You know what? I’m gonna loan it to you. Put it on while you’re studying for finals and soon you’ll be raring to go to that academic summit.” Lindsay is skeptical. But she takes the vinyl album home and soon we see Lindsay in her bedroom as the opening lines of “Box of Rain” play on the HiFi. She stares at t…
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…s about Muslims. King told Gaffney on his radio program, for example, that American Muslims don’t “unite as Americans” in times of war. Zuhdi Jasser, an Arizona physician whom conservatives frequently highlight as their example of a true “moderate” Muslim, and who will reportedly be a key witness for King, says in Gingrich’s movie, “if anyone wants to find a Muslim voice, you’re going to find that it appears monolithic.” He, like Gaffney, claims t…
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