Religion Dispatches
…ch. We are the Church.” While a single example, this statement reminds us, today, on World AIDS Day 2008, that throughout its history, AIDS/HIV has been entangled with religion—for good and ill. As we move into the second quarter century of the pandemic, this entanglement continues. Twenty-first century religion has been shaped by and has shaped the AIDS/HIV crisis; they continue to shape one another. Today, we often hear about this entanglement i…
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…be the shunning and persecution of dissenters within civil society. After today, all religious conservatives are Brendan Eich, the former CEO of Mozilla who was chased out of that company for supporting California’s Proposition 8. Dreher renews an earlier call for what he calls the Benedict Option: One can certainly understand the joy that LGBT Americans and their supporters feel today. But orthodox Christians must understand that things are goin…
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…ization that it has been, and continues to be, primarily a political issue promoted by religious groups with a far larger agenda than simply abortion—and driven by an energy that goes far deeper into the racial history of the country than most Americans want to admit. After the Civil War in the 1860s, the white South was able to keep former black slaves from full participation in society for another 100 years. Only in the 1960s were African Americ…
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…uses of civil war. We see this same dynamic unfolding in the United States today, the greatest threat stemming from an ideology widely known as “Christian nationalism.” While identity has, of course, always been central to U.S. politics—particularly on the Right—what’s different today is not only the sharp decline in the White Christian majority, but the widespread belief among those who remain that they are persecuted and that their entire way of…
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…m minorities in India after the British left (and the Caliphate Movement): today Pakistan has been scarred by vicious sectarian violence, but the mostly Sunni country was founded by an Ismaili Shia leader. Two, in fact. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s ‘Great Leader’ and kind of its George Washington, was born into a minority sect within what was already a Shia minority. The Pakistan Movement also received significant funding from the head of the I…
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…ve, regardless of what it is. One way to describe what’s happening is that today there is a surplus of masculine purpose. Purposive energy exceeds the capacity to imagine what good purposes to put it to. This might help explain how men today might be drawn to causes that promise opportunities to express purpose. That is what ISIS offers. It is what vigilante occupation of government property offers. It is what “stand your ground” laws offer. It is…
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…ch. We are the Church.” While a single example, this statement reminds us, today, on World AIDS Day 2008, that throughout its history, AIDS/HIV has been entangled with religion—for good and ill. As we move into the second quarter-century of the pandemic, this entanglement continues. Twenty-first century religion has been shaped by and has shaped the AIDS/HIV crisis; they continue to influence one another. Today, we often hear about this entangleme…
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…is the complete insulation from the consequences of bad policy enjoyed by today’s jeunesse doree. Not only do they not have to go to the burning deserts of Iraq or to the chilly forbidding heights of Afghanistan: they don’t even have to know anything about the lives of those who are going. The idea that they might experience any Fallows-like guilt or have any second thoughts about their degree of insulation is simply not an issue today. This extr…
Read More…there: In 1967, there were perhaps fewer than 200 mosques in the country. Today, there are likely more than 2,000. In 1967, the single largest Muslim organization in the United States was probably Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam, a group that was not accepted as legitimately Muslim by many Sunni and Shi‘a religious authorities. Today, the sectarian profile of Muslim America roughly mirrors that of the rest of the Muslim world. The majority of M…
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…he order is hard to predict, especially in the wake of the House’s passage today of “Trumpcare,” also known as the American Health Care Act, which effectively guts the ACA, including its “preventive care mandate.” According to numerous reports, the version passed by the House today not only repeals protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions, but actually adds to the list of pre-existing conditions that someone can be denied health insu…
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