Religion Dispatches
…to borrow a pre-Protestant term. And those are reserved for “the new chosen,” as the Fellowship calls America’s elite, all those now preparing for cozy afterlives to their public lives in penthouses and beach houses and a ranch down in Crawford. +++ Read more about the economy and free market fundamentalism: In Markets We Trust, Peter Laarman Faith-Based Bailout, Louis A. Ruprecht…
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…ence journalism reads like an endtimes thriller. [The New Yorker] Virginia Beach, home to Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, is slowly sinking under water. Part of what makes Michael Schulson’s, “In Evangelical Country, an Apocalypse of Rising Seas” a powerful piece of journalism is that it focuses on how a global issue is affecting this single location. Schulson investigates local churches, businesses, and politics with a remarkable…
Read More…even the rich deserve political representation, though not in today’s crapulent and apparently unchanging form. A new and more just way of being together might be just the ticket to getting the American political whale off the beach. All it would take would be a charismatic and articulate leader, who, along with a thoughtful and responsible political establishment, could summon the nation to a new understanding of common purpose… Oh. Right. Never…
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…l, traditional habits through the streets of our city and down to the nude beach. One even carried a machine gun and smoked a cigar. They were met with shock and amazement, but captured everyone’s interest. Their next appearance was at a softball game where their pompon routine all but stole the show and by the time the Castro Street Fair had rolled around, they were ready to recruit more. In the fall of 1979, Sister Hysterectoria and Reverend Mot…
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…perity evangelists, died yesterday of complications from a fall in Newport Beach, California. Perhaps no evangelist outside of Billy Graham has played such an integral role in contemporary American religious life in the last century. Roberts’ healing ministry, his seed-faith teachings, the creation of the City of Faith and Oral Roberts University are the highlights of the life of a fascinating American icon whose larger-than-life personality, visi…
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…for a meeting in Providence’s new Freemason-themed hotel, I got a surprise phonecall from Father Isaac, the cassocked gentle giant who serves as Eastern Orthodox chaplain there. We hadn’t known each other well while I was a student, but I’d always liked him. Upon hearing I was in town, he thought he’d ring me up, and what followed was certainly the longest conversation we’d ever had together. He wished me well, but much more, he thanked God in a d…
Read More…nts than their quota allows. Most Muslim countries have a quota; a limited number of hajjis permitted from that country in any one year. This number is set by hajj authorities in Saudi Arabia, because, in all fairness, there has to be a cap on how many Muslims converge on the place. Right now, it stands at around 3 million! Countries with large populations of Muslims have many more applicants than their allotted number of pilgrims. This means you…
Read More…ong after, the former acquaintance called to threaten Subhi from a Turkish phone number. Power noted that Subhi spoke at a recent UN Security Council Session, the first-ever dedicated to LGBT rights, which she said was an important precedent to set: But also, it allowed us to convey, in a single voice, and with the authority of the Security Council – which is the premiere global enforcement body for peace and security – it allowed us to convey tha…
Read More…d that the film was intended to be a provocative political statement assailing the religion. He denied being Sam Bacile, the pseudonym for the video’s purportedly Israeli Jewish writer and director, but AP said the cellphone number it called for a telephone interview with Bacile on Tuesday matched Nakoula’s address. —- For more RD coverage of the events in Libya see “Tragic Violence in Libya: No Excuses,” by Haroon Moghul — ed….
Read More…nite State, the Republican primary calendar moves southward to states like South Carolina, where Trump is polling well. But Trump’s momentum and the structure of the GOP primary calendar could be hiding a potential weakness for Trump that may hurt him both in an extended primary fight and in the general election: Catholic voters. Right now Trump is doing well among less affluent and less educated white voters in the South, Appalachia (West Virgini…
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