Religion Dispatches
…it occurs. And since our particular context is not conducive to marijuana use, marijuana use would be “foolish” within it. Crouch explains: In our North American context, what is the function of pot? It is associated with superficially pleasant disengagement from the world. It connotes a kind of indolence and “tuning out” that is not an option for people who want to become agents of compassion and neighbor love, not to mention its association wit…
Read More
…political analysts have suggested, the religious fervor behind these riots and acts of vandalism is likely stoked by purely political concerns. That the leading Islamic political party in Malaysia claims that Muslims may be confused by the Christian use of the word is evidence of their own ignorance of the Qur’an’s position on the subject and indicates their interest in dividing the Malaysian population along religious lines for their own politic…
Read More
…o many gay men affected by the AIDS crisis. I left this discussion out because, again, it took away from the cohesion of the book as a whole. And with all the recent debates about PrEP (a pill that can be used to prevent HIV transmission) and gay marriage, I felt there were more pressing issues to engage—okay, and I figured maybe the plays were best left to theatre historians and performance theorists. What are some of the biggest misconceptions a…
Read More
…needs. Connecting to their faith and their communities is enhanced by the use of technology. As in numerous of examples of a thoughtful, temperate use of technology, knee-jerk unplugging can, in fact, disconnect people from important relational and spiritual experiences. Indeed, as I noted in a recent article here on RD, for believers and non-believers alike there is a strong correlation between technological engagement and civic or spiritual en…
Read More…inty, is all. It is not at all clear that liberals and progressives cannot use the language of evil, of course; they simply call different things by that name. More to the point, the thoughtful use of the language of evil is subtly related to another concept, that of sacred value. Torture is deemed evil, precisely because it violates the sacred value of the individual human person. Terror and other forms of indiscriminate violence are evil for sim…
Read More…ry of history”: Almighty God documents a history of meaning making and the use of those meanings to regulate bodies and identities: how Roman Catholics and Protestants looked to their respective traditions to understand marriage and race; how they “knew” their beliefs and their interpretations of texts to be correct; how those beliefs were subsequently encoded into laws that regulated human behaviors; and even how love has been, and continues to b…
Read More
…must not let a few bishops at the top hinder the global effort simply because they continue to fight change within the Church. In 2010, the Pope made an important first step in a journey that the leaders in the Church must make towards a compassionate, realistic view of safer sex and condom use. Like any voyage, the first step is the hardest, but those of us in the Church hope and pray that our leaders will have the courage to undertake this pil…
Read More
…aring a child’s face like a mask. These cases show what’s at stake when we use horror movies to interpret the real world. In cases like the West Memphis Three, where three young boys were murdered, it seemed that the fear, anger, and sadness experienced after a horrible and seemingly inexplicable tragedy were weaponized by authorities and opportunists to produce a simple, tidy explanation—that the murders had been part of a satanic ritual—rather t…
Read More
…ations of Islam. They might sound like Islam and refer to Islam, but their use of Islam is not dissimilar from the use of scientific fact by the creationist: She intends to undermine the scientific enterprise with scientific language, suggesting how wholly the discursive space has been dominated by a certain kind of language, but also how easy it is to fool the outsider into thinking he is encountering a serious, rigorous, and historically and tex…
Read More
…ans enjoy what God created for them. They believe that married couples can use the sites because they can keep their sexual thoughts within the confines of marriage, imagining only their spouse as they read and contribute to discussions. These evangelicals have faith that if anyone uses the sites as porn then God will hold them accountable. As one online store owner explained to me, “It’s not my job to be the Holy Spirit and convict people.” Evang…
Read More