Religion Dispatches
…on the heels of the birth of my second grandson. One minute we were on the phone and I was describing the birth event and sharing photos on Facebook. The next day, she went to bed, coughed once, and then breathed no more. She was 44. I thought about her when I read in the Qur’an how “every soul will have its taste of death.” So gentle was her moment of passing, and yet so painful has been these few months without her here to enjoy this Ramadan to…
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…sformation” of the Catholic Church that is under way, “a decisive shift in numbers towards the Global South—to Asia, Africa and Latin America.” A century ago, he says, two-thirds of the world’s Catholics were in Europe, but by the middle of this century that number will fall “to perhaps a sixth.” Geography is not destiny, but it is only natural that prelates from one part of the world will tend to speak for the traditions with which they are most…
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…m. It was the perfect target. A small Jewish cultural center staffed by an American-Israeli Rabbi and his wife, both of whom were killed, was also singled out. This indicates a transnational orientation. Mumbai does have a small Jewish community, but the center served a Jewish tourist community. It was a symbolic target because in South Asia and elsewhere in the Muslim world, “Jews” and the religion of Judaism are routinely implicated in complex,…
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…ump hurled insults at groups which, combined, represent a vast majority of Americans. He insulted women, Muslims, Mexicans and Latinos, African-Americans, people of color, members of the press, people with disabilities, and career politicians whom he denounced as “crooked.” That means it’s not at all hyperbolic to issue a warning call to each of those groups who will, in all likelihood, have their freedom targeted by the incoming administration. B…
Read More…tions of the president. Last year, he came under fire for meeting with the American Bible Society president “to begin a dialogue on the importance of the Bible in the founding of the country.” In 2010, the White House refused to comment on DuBois’ phone call to religious right ideologue David Jeremiah after the latter called the president “a dangerous person” moving the country toward “socialism.” It was obviously an incident the White House would…
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…, “lament is the language of suffering.” Kendrick wants to “get God on the phone” but, just as in the Book of Lamentations, God remains silent. But that doesn’t stop Kendrick from baring his soul, Why you wanna see a good man with a broken heart? Once upon a time I used to go to church and talk to God Now I’m thinkin’ to myself, hollow tips is all I got There’s nothing quite as audacious as calling God a liar or suggesting that communing with this…
Read More…ct at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, told me in a phone interview that he had “replied directly to him about how he could get off the list.” Potok pointed out that the main reason Lively is included on the list is because “in our view he consciously lies about, and defames, gay people. His theory of the Holocaust is equivalent to the flat Earth theory. It’s obvious to us that he has to know his allegations are completely f…
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…f us know, all too well, that it is “terrorism” when the victims are white Americans—otherwise it’s simply a “hate crime.” But, then again, it can only be a hate crime if the perpetrators are white Americans, otherwise it’s “terrorism.”) Somehow the story is more easily told when we don’t have to talk about race—because no one knows how to talk about when people of color attack other people of color. But when reports refer to an attack on a “gay n…
Read More…sday, to every registered Republican or non-aligned Iowa voter with a cell phone on record. . . . The video’s star is Molotov Mitchell, whom Cary K. Gordon, president of PeaceMakers Institute and pastor of Sioux City’s Cornerstone Church, calls “the guerilla warrior of Judeo-Christian political commentary.” Mitchell is an edgy independent filmmaker whose Illuminati Pictures delivers something akin to an animated political cartoon weekly at WorldN…
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…on was transmitted to their insurers by some administrative means, be it a phone call, email or letter. So after years of fighting the mandate, and accusing women’s health advocates and public health official of not understanding why it was a violation of their faith for their insurer to provide birth control that they neither arranged nor paid for, Notre Dame basically turned around and said “never mind.” What happened to cause this astounding tu…
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