Religion Dispatches
…ester 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 a memorial or a museum—it is a pilg…
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On Christmas Day, 2009, as a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam prepared to land in Detroit, passengers smelled smoke and heard a series of bangs or popping noises. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old man from a prominent Nigerian family, was attempting to ignite an explosive device sewn into his underwear. He succeeded only in igniting himself—after his arrest, he had to be treated for second-degree burns on his hands and crotch. Inst…
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…dy in the wake of Jimmy Carter’s nomination to the Democratic presidential ticket in 1976. After Carter described himself as an evangelical, polling firms rushed to map the extent and influence of this group. In doing so, they actually helped define it (and possibly overinflate it). Evangelical leaders trying to help build political muscle for their flocks—especially Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson—encouraged these efforts, cited the polls, and at…
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…Greek Orthodox church, and on the other by a field stretching out to a subdivision. Just inside its doors in 2009, 67-year-old Dr. George Tiller, one of the few late-term abortion providers in the United States and an usher at his longtime church, was shot and killed by a man named Scott Roeder. To abortion rights advocates, the murder was the tragic culmination of a decades-long campaign by abortion opponents who had stalked Dr. Tiller; barraged…
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…seat while I ride shotgun next to Jeff Millsap, a 40-year-old community activist. We are headed to the Tohono O’odham Nation, the third largest reservation in the country and an area only a little smaller than the state of Connecticut. The back of the SUV has been packed with water, Gatorade, crackers, socks, clothes, and medical supplies. As the sky gradually turns from black to indigo, we start gazing into the brush along the highway, looking fo…
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…It might be even harder to imagine Ben Franklin submitting to these indignities. Or George Washington. Or Theodore or Franklin Roosevelt. But all of them did, along with eleven other presidents, and a great many of the leading politicians, generals, artists, and scientists of this country and several others. And some of them have done even more outlandish things as part of their commitment to Freemasonry. Perhaps because Masonry and its legends a…
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…nes. But the fullest expression of thermodynamic warfare came in World War II: blitzkriegs, tanks, bombing raids, and charnel houses. The apotheosis of the thermodynamic paradigm came with the fission bomb that exploded over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, unleashing the force locked inside every atom. This obsession with energy continued through the early years of the Cold War, as the superpowers raced to build the fastest fighter planes and pack th…
Read More…lieve that, Brooks puts it, “arrangements based on self-interest and competition are inherently destructive.” Brooks clearly admires Francis as the very model of a “good person” and “one of the world’s most inspiring figures,” but he simply cannot fathom why the Holy Father would be so “relentlessly negative… when describing institutions in which people compete for political power or economic gain. At one point he links self-interest with violence…
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…e billions in lost revenue occupy much of the news, the question of responsibility remains central. And who is responsible? Who is to blame? Unfortunately, the two most popular interpretations offer little help. They do, however, provide useful illustrations of the kind of thinking that helped create the crisis in the first place and they also suggest a deeper interpretation in light of faith in God. The first interpretation I will call a version…
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…hed in flaunting her God-given gifts to draw attention to her Vegas-based ministry, Hookers for Jesus. At the 2008 Adult Entertainment Expo, for example, a 40-year-old Lobért (dressed in a tight black tank top with strategically placed pink letters spelling “HOOKERS” above a silver ichthus) confronted some of the industry’s most renowned promoters alongside Heather Veitch, a former stripper with a ministry of her own. While their message wasn’t pa…
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