Religion Dispatches
…would that lead to?” another Amish man asked me. “We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a telephone. It’s not just how you use the technology that concerns us. We’re also concerned about what kind of person you become when you use it.” Just so. Sigh….
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…ached multiple times by Cuban government officials asking us not to go because it would cause trouble [with the U.S.] for them. It was a delicate place, because we were a group of Americans and didn’t want to cause trouble for the Cuban government, because Guantánamo is a U.S. naval base on their land without their consent.[5] We camped on a big hill where you can kind of see the naval base and prison in the distance. We did all our solidarity act…
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…ter”. As well as posters, the scheme also aims to tackle improper language use – such as “that’s so gay” – by showing children how to use other phrases to describe something negative. Wendy Francis – Queensland state director of the ACL – told the Brisbane Times: “No one should be bullied at school, including children grappling with same-sex attraction or gender confusion. “But this program goes way beyond an anti-bullying program…Children have th…
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…’t really different from other advocacy groups in this respect. I wouldn’t use the words “tricky” or “manipulative,” because those words imply that there’s a certain moral ineptness inherent in chaos rhetoric. What I’d claim, rather, is what I said earlier: most of us tolerate chaos rhetoric quite well when it’s being used by a group that we like. In other words, various methods of persuasion (in this case, chaos rhetoric) are called “tricky” or “…
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…poverty is something to be overcome mainly by heroic individuals who don’t use their identity (racial, ethnic, or religious) as an “excuse” for social patterns of inequality and exclusion, but whose individual merits would be revealed through competition, often aided by their belief in Jesus. As a Muslim and an aging, disabled former athlete faced with a society not usually designed with people of different levels of mobility in mind, Muhammad Ali…
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…bor, Miller must, if the charge is true, not really be a Christian. Or, to use another example, the Westboro Baptist Church must not really be Christians because true Christians would never protest at funerals. It’s an effective strategy, insofar as it appears to protect the integrity of mainstream religious belief against what appear as more extreme elements. Indeed, sometimes it’s appropriate and necessary to do so. But it can also be lazy and d…
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…victed for doing his job.” He has, moreover, encouraged police officers to use violence on suspects. “Why show restraint?” the American president repeatedly asked police officers in Long Island, equating roughing up of suspects with the enforcement of law. And it is an equation: for Trump, as for Arpaio, unchecked power—the violence of the state, aimed at citizens, at journalists, or at “illegals”—is not merely a prerogative, it is a good. This is…
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…go through multiple layers of approval, to the point where you can’t even use the word LGBT. They’ll use something like “Spectrum” or “Welcome Ministry.” It has to be so coded that it doesn’t ruffle any feathers, and that’s not the case for women. And that’s very sad. To me, LGBT people are sometimes treated like lepers. One of the things I’ve learned in this informal ministry is the unbelievable things priests, sisters, brothers and lay associat…
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…e other church program is the worldwide creation of temples: those special-use limited-access buildings used for rituals (not the regular open-access church buildings used for Sunday services). In the pioneer period, temples were grand edifices that echoed Utah’s mountains in their architecture. Each was different. But since 1997 the Church has built or authorized the construction of one hundred “mini-temples,” most of them beyond the Mormon Cultu…
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…ahon. Her connection to wrestling is even more obvious; and not simply because she used to run the WWE. No, McMahon has experience as a wrestling character. Get this: for years McMahon appeared in WWE shows in the role of a corporate executive who belonged to a dysfunctional management team vying for “control” of the WWE. Her in-character name: Linda McMahon. No doubt McMahon’s experience playing the character Linda McMahon has prepared her well f…
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