Religion Dispatches
…onal level of individual rioters as to what they did and why, and on a national level of what is happening and who is responsible. Whether the first anniversary of Jan 6 will bring further violence is unknown, but what is knowable is that without accountability, there will be no peace….
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…ng down the street holding hands,” says one of the three teenage boys who will send Carlos to the hospital in middle of the play’s second act, “I’d take a baseball bat and kill them.” “Congratulations—you’ve pissed a lot of people off,” a member of the audience said to the young cast of Be Still and Know as they sat on the edge of the stage during a talk-back session after the play had ended. The comment was good-natured and sent a ripple of laugh…
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…eir microwave, not to bring their toaster oven and not to bring their cell phone. It was almost funny. Following that announcement from the now infamous loud “speaker,” he said that fajr prayer would be at 5:40. I should have thought more clearly about this, but as it stands, I have three different prayer time schedules: my iphone has one from the Ipray app; and I printed one off line from Islamicity; then collected one from my favorite mosque, wh…
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…with possibility and joy, began to cool, as cell phone calls dwindled and numbers eventually changed or were disconnected. As our shared realities drifted apart in their likeness, like Pigpen, I also turned to technologies that promised connection to try to tamp down the yearning and temper that sense of loss. #5 : Three Ways to American Beauty by Aaron K. Kerr At the height of secular modernity, when Catholics were opening the windows of Vatican…
Read More…about. I have to admit it’s always puzzled me that a global church of 14 million members bothers itself with the doings of a minority of liberals in the United States. And I can only imagine how this all looks to people not of the Mormon faith. But according to Melanie, the story of the circumstances that led her to take the video down is not as important as the story of why she put it back up. “The real story for me,” she explained, “is what doe…
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…loss, but that night in the cab, I only felt wonder. Joy. Overwhelmed to still have so much still before me. What will it profit a man if he gains the world, yet loses his soul? You ask me this. I know you do. I haven’t gained the world. It was here all along, a wonderfully complicated and messy world that I was too afraid to be part of. And how could I lose my soul? God has given me this life, this heart, this desire for all things good and lovel…
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…eligious America are (and, moreover, in the wake of Obama’s election, who will get their phone calls returned from the White House) certain names keep cropping up. Pastor Rick Warren, who sees no daylight between his views and James Dobson’s, but who, according to Sullivan’s book, former-DNC-chair Terry McAuliffe blasphemously didn’t know; Jim Wallis, best-selling author and activist who lambasts the religious right for its petty intolerance and t…
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…the concept of a unified self (which is a necessary precondition for free will) are illusions, according to Wegner. He quotes the science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s remark that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Because we cannot possibly understand how the fantastically complex machines in our skulls really work, Wegner contends, we explain our behavior—and that of others—in terms of such primitive, mag…
Read More…f discrimination against Christians in the military that the Liberty Institute could find. He was chosen not so much because his case is strong, but because he was willing. So it’s quite possible that they’re unwilling to let Monk’s case go because he’s all they have….
Read More…ou need to know to keep on reading? I’d cheerfully watch that man read the phone book. So, when my buddy Rev. El Mundo sent me the link to the comedian’s message, I eagerly clicked on it. I was surprised when I saw this wasn’t a clip of his latest hysterical stand up, but an essay he penned for the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog. The topic of his essay was how he came to be an atheist. The whole piece is here. While there is humor in the pie…
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