Religion Dispatches
…2000) and others, estimates at around half are confident, with even higher numbers among younger clergy. The bishops know this and yet few are able to speak with the kind of candor the pope manages on a daily basis. There are reasons for this, which brings me to the third thing that happened—or didn’t happen—in the wake of Francis’ press conference. No bishop or church leader stood by Francis and in so many words said publicly, “You know, the pop…
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…d creates a space that is very profound and spiritual for me.” France: Gay Flight Attendants Seek Opt Out From Flights to Iran Earlier this month, gay flights attendants for Air France sought the ability to opt out of working flights on a new route to Tehran; female flight attendants were previously given that option after some objected to the requirement that they wear a head scarf when deplaning in Iran. Malaysia: Top Cop Says LGBT People Cannot…
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…resent, including Tim Rogér of Rochester NY, who lost his daughter Jean, a flight attendant on board American Airlines Flight 11. Mr. Roger said he hoped the pope would say prayers for the place, for the people, and for his daughter Jean. Praying at a unlighted candle next to the prie-dieu Pope Benedict XVI used on his visit, the Pope offered those prayers silently while looking at the south pool of the memorial. The 9/11 site has become not just…
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The Flight of the Intellectuals by Paul Berman (Melville House, May 2010) Islamophobia/Islamophilia: Beyond the Politics of Enemy and Friend Andrew Shryock, ed. (Indiana University Press, June 2010) Lauded by Foreign Affairs as “one of America’s leading public intellectuals,” Paul Berman was recently identified in a flattering New York Times review as “a man who identifies ‘with the liberal left.’” If Berman inhabits and projects the liberal left…
Read More…ht stalwart Gary Bauer warmed up the audience by comparing the election to Flight 93, a new standard even for the hyperbolic rhetoric of evangelical supporters of Trump, who previously have called his rhetoric “Churchillian” and warned that this election could be the final nail in the coffin of American liberty. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a Flight 93 election. This may be our last shot. It’s time to roll. It’s time to run down the aisle and sav…
Read More…as Yugoslav, and most recently almost destroyed. And today? As I board the flight to Sarajevo, I’m not sure if I should expect a post-Soviet wasteland, an eerily quiet former war zone, or something else. The flight, though, is reassuringly undistinguished. There are lots of Bosnians, white and Western enough to pass for everyday Americans, though the occasional hijabs might throw you off. There are a few Americans, who seem to be intrepid backpack…
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…is to convey the enormity of the loss of life, to make otherwise abstract numbers visible. In the Oak Brook commemoration, each flag has attached to it a brief biography of the person killed, with color-coded ribbons differentiating civilians and flight crews from first responders. Orlando, Florida, on the logic that far more were injured in both visible and “invisible” ways, has opted to erect 250,000 flags. It is not death that is primary here,…
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…m like a recent rabbinic innovation, but it is not. Actually, there were a number of precedents for such prayer flights; one as early as 1942, when the Jews of British Mandatory Palestine feared that the Nazis would break through the British defenses in Egypt and conquer the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean. Prayers were said through the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine. Among them were prayers offered from a small plane. Other such at…
Read More…cation of his religious worldview served to insulate him from conservative flight. Bump writes that Robertson’s “comments about black Americans were buried under a rush to defend the right of Christian Americans to express disapproval of gays,” and that, compared to Bundy Robertson “did a much better job leveraging political sentiment in his favor after his controversial remarks.” But Robertson didn’t have to do much leveraging; his comments came…
Read More…ed “Can Therapy Help Change Sexual Orientation?” The person who claimed to change runs a group called People Can Change and runs a weekend retreat using holding and touch along with highly active and emotive techniques (beating pillows to vicariously release aggression on parents) in order to change orientation. This is not what the New York Times article was about. In contrast to this report, the New York Times article generated no controversy or…
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