Religion Dispatches
…nia only happened fifteen years ago; I wish I could buy my interlocutors a ticket to Sarajevo, and answer them only after their visit. We should not forget that Europe’s violent spasms ended but very recently, and with the death of those generations who intimately recall Nazism and the Holocaust, Soviet Communism and the Gulag, it is possible the temptation to return to ugly ideologies will only increase. Recently, the Boston Review covered the ri…
Read More…all of the bishops were allegedly forced to tender their resignations, the numbers are plummeting. Ten years ago, 73% of Chileans called themselves Catholic. Today that percentage is 45 with reports that in Latin America as a whole numbers are down 20% in the same period. In Switzerland in November 2018, six prominent progressive Catholic women left the Church by filing the requisite papers that relieved them of contributing church taxes. Four are…
Read More…ality is a sin and that it is one of the worst sins and will surely be our ticket to eternal flames. When that’s been your introduction to a text – you tend to be shy about giving it ultimate authority in your life. But, what has happened for most gay and lesbian Christians is that they have dedicated themselves to in-depth study of the Bible – not just a surface reading. Many books have been written about what the Bible really says about homosexu…
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…er, she meets Jerry Ricks, a handsome LDS missionary who sends her a plane ticket to Utah after he leaves Austria. Jerry’s stint as a missionary exacerbates his hatred of rules; he’s unhappy to find himself saddled with a wife who insists everyone pray six or seven times a day and get out of bed early each morning for an hour of scripture reading. His wife, for her part, is beyond disappointed to find herself married to a man who cheats on her, us…
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…orporate activist is running for mayor of New York City on the Green Party ticket; the platform of his campaign, a plea for the sanctity of neighborhoods. “Are you in trouble?” he asks. “Yes I am,” she replies, frankly. She looks it. Billy is wearing his “costume,” a white preacher’s collar, black vest front, and bright blue suit. His hair, combed into a pompadour, is dyed blond with dark roots showing. The more she speaks, the more he drifts out…
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…equest was also denied citing freedom of speech—though a judge limited the number of protestors that could be present to fifteen. So on August 8, George and several of his strippers decided to turn the tables by holding their own protest in front of the church during Sunday morning services. The Foxhole dancers (some of whom complained of sleep deprivation) did not match Pastor Dunfee’s zeal. Rather than bullhorns, they came equipped with lawn cha…
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…pe. The six-part film series has not only generated billions of dollars in ticket sales and merchandising, it has inspired the religious imagination of fans who see something more in the film than a commercially entertaining story. On the one hand, the narrative itself provides viewers with a mythology that is vivid and gripping as it covers well-trodden, mythically familiar territory—good battling evil, revealed mysteries about the true order of…
Read More…paradigmatic free gift, is replaced by the massive edifice of Wall Street number-crunchers and their continual wagering on the future probabilities. As we all know, a lot of money has been made—and lost—this way. Which leads Buchan to his second point: money generates more money, even on Sunday. This is a subtler point, one that he develops specifically in relation to the invention of paper money—money, that is to say, with absolutely nothing to…
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…upted over this behavior, Nehlen responded by posting the names, telephone numbers, and email addresses of some of his critics. Nehlen’s so reviled that even Steve Bannon’s Breitbart has disavowed him, though no less accomplished a racist than Donald Trump himself praised Nehlen during the primary. Nehlen won’t come anywhere near unseating Ryan, of course, but that doesn’t mean the WisGOP—which appears not to have made any recent statements disavo…
Read More…nt of the delegates were members of minority groups, and male delegates outnumbered women delegates about two to one. To judge by these numbers, the Republicans still play to an America conceived as predominantly white. Racial prejudice against Obama appears in several ways. One is the denial by racists of their prejudice but their attribution of racism to others—a ploy known as projection. (Pollsters are having a difficult time estimating the ext…
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