Religion Dispatches
…e people who follow? While Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master provides the latest (and greatest) vantage point, 2011 saw the release of three solid films on the topic that made some waves at the box office and in critical conversation: Kumaré, Sound of My Voice, and Martha Marcy May Marlene. But why now? Is it due to the publicity surrounding Scientologists John Travolta and Tom Cruise? Or is it that a member of the LDS Church has a chance of bei…
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…to show mercy. Incidentally, we thank Dmitry Anatolievich Medvedev for his latest wonderful aphorism. If Medvedev gave his presidency the slogan: “Freedom is better than non-freedom”, then, thanks to Medvedev’s felicitous saying, Putin’s third term has a good chance of being known by a new aphorism: “Prison is better than stoning.” I would like you to think carefully about the following reflection by Montaigne from his Essays written in the 16th c…
Read More…ere was fretting it would hurt him with all kinds of religious voters. The latest Pew poll, though, shows Obama bouncing back from a decline in support among Catholic voters. As Daniel Burke at Religion News Service notes, in June, the same poll found Obama barely leading Mitt Romney among Catholic voters, 49-47%. But in September, he’s pulled ahead, and now leads Romney among Catholic voters 54-39%. Pew’s comparison with 2008 exit polls showed th…
Read MoreOn the latest Bloggingheads, I spoke with Linda Sarsour, Advocacy and Civic Engagement Coordinator for the National Network for Arab American Communities, about the anti-Muslim New York City subway ads, the threat of domestic terrorism, the “Innocence of Muslims” film, and Islamophobia in the presidential campaign. In the clip below, we discuss Newsweek’s “Muslim Rage” cover story, and how the magazine’s invitation to Twitter to use a #MuslimRage…
Read More…him. Muslims see Muhammad as the last in a line of Prophets, all of whom must be believed in—Muhammad isn’t very different from Jesus, stressing, time and again, reconciliation and cooperation. It is hoped that this latest spasm of violence can be understood in this larger context. Hopefully we can take this moment to think about how Islam is frequently portrayed, and use this as an opportunity to learn a little bit more….
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…sands of troops, diplomats, and other Americans still stationed there. His promotion of this latest film has now contributed in some way to violence in Libya and Egypt, and that includes the death of one of our best ambassadors. We are on the precipice of war with Iran. The Middle East is deeply unstable, and we are unfortunately caught up in much of that uncertainty. This is not the time for inflammatory action; there are anti-democratic forces i…
Read More…(Wheaton College, the prominent evangelical school in Illinois, became the latest institution to sue the Obama administration over the contraceptin coverage requirement.) “Unfortunately they violated one of the primary dictates of our faith… which is that we tell the truth.” Knox called contraceptive coverage with no co-pays a moral imperative. His rejoinder to conservative Catholics and evangelical claims that the ACA attacks religious freedom: “…
Read More…ination in employment by such organizations receiving federal funds. The latest development in a long-simmering standoff between the administration and civil liberties groups is the American Civil Liberties Union’s Freedom of Information Act request, submitted this week to the Department of Justice, seeking greater detail about the faith-based organizations that have received such certificates of exemption, and the circumstances under which thes…
Read More…on obscurantist versions of the faith, a more insistent discussion of the latest in biblical scholarship, a yet more widespread commentary on the tendency of many of today’s evangelical leaders to focus on tiny segments of scripture—this might be a valuable service. And might it cement an accommodation not with the evangelicals, but with secular intellectuals? That might be a good thing. The salient solidarity today may not be with the community…
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…hurch walls, and has for some time now. The “rise of the nones” is but the latest phase in the long transformation of religion into what we now commonly call “spirituality.” In my class on “Spirituality in America” at the University of Virginia, we use Leigh Schmidt’s pathbreaking Restless Souls to trace this phenomenon over two centuries, from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s break with New England Unitarianism in the 1830s to the multibillion dollar spirit…
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