Religion Dispatches
…prevailing sense of early 21st century LDS institutional life is that the best way to deal with such anxieties is to push through them, and that the best expression of the faith is the projection of a sense of assurance as polished and attractive as the storefronts at City Creek Mall. That’s how most Mormons plan to walk through what may very well be a season of public relations nightmares, as Romney’s GOP candidacy brings even greater scrutiny t…
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…is the tool of innocence; so many of these armed men said, “the gun is the promotion of peace.” But it’s also simultaneously the transgression. That’s what the thrust of “Thy Rod” and the sexual innuendo of it means—the way that’s also the transgression of a White man who’s doing his best James Brown imitation. Because in that imagination, Blackness is a kind of sexuality, and Kunnemann possesses that potent sexual power in the same way that he cl…
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…eternal destiny.” Banana, Proof of God’s Existence Comfort is a man whose best-known evolutionary criticism is the banana (or “the atheist’s nightmare,” as he calls it), which he says proves God’s existence because of its intelligently-designed appearance. In an unintentionally funny video from 2006, he expounds on the brilliant design of the banana, as a most impressed Kirk Cameron looks on. That Comfort is so lacking in imagination that he can’…
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…k, 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 the left for “not getting it”; and Joel Hunter, the Florida megachurch pastor who infamously turned down a stint as the president of the Christian Coalition, and author of A New Kind of Conservative. FIPL has taken a lead role in promoting the “broader agenda” of some of these ev…
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…quake in Haiti. As I will explain, I am not sure that attacking him is the best use of anyone’s time. Nevertheless he has provoked me to rank my top five things to remember about him—less as a direct response to his comments than as a way to cut though the media frenzy caused by the comments and to address wider issues raised by his career. Most people know that Robertson interpreted the quake in the context of Haitians who supposedly “swore a pac…
Read More…best policy, interest groups from both sides of the question will do their best to lobby them, which, as Goldstein points out, is a much more difficult proposition than twisting the arms of elected officials. But it’s difficult not to agree with Amanda Marcotte on this one: In a common sense world, there would be no controversy over including contraception in the slate of preventive services that the federal government will soon require insurance…
Read More…rected on a pike at Plymouth following the conclusion of King Phillip’s War. The settlers subsequently decided that that impalement also warranted a similar declaration of general thanksgiving. As Leonard Cohen sings of America’s covenantal ambivalence, this land is “[t]he cradle of the best and of the worst.” Thanksgiving has been marshaled yet again in the battle over what is the proper interpretation of the idea of America. With thousands of Sy…
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…hile mistreating the rest: I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched. When those who earned their wealth by mistreatin…
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…lebook. They are recruited into the Church to serve two functions: They’re promotional tools, and they fund the Church. The rules are bent for them. In the New Yorker piece on Paul Haggis, he tells this great story about how he always had doubts about Scientology and [whether] it worked—notably, once he got to the higher levels. He would talk to his auditor about them, and the auditor would allow it. That does not happen if you’re not a celebrity…
Read More…mature person. Age does not make maturation, per se. Yesterday we had the best of the best; the age was augmented by the quality of maturation and illuminated by the etiquette (or adab) of simple yet deep devotion. I was, for a brief moment, at home and when this happens to me, I feel a special grace from Allah. I could just be in the midst of my own love for Allah. I did not have to fight. I did not have to struggle for justice. And even more: I…
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