Religion Dispatches
…t of Martin Luther King’s assassination fielded celebratory calls as a telephone operator in Memphis, Tennessee, telephoned us to awake my four-year-old twins from their sleep. Through her sniffles and giggles, this loving grandmother and now proud American citizen, kept repeating, “you tell those babies Obama did it! Obama did it! Wake them up and let them know that “O’RockoBama” [my son’s pronunciation] really did win tonight!” And I also receiv…
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…ey also allow us to easily select and customize information to address our minute-by-minute needs. This flexibility of access, opportunities for sharing and collaboration, and almost endless options for creative customization extends across generations. This in itself offers a never been before seen level of authority to youth in particular, especially with regard to sacred resources. So, it is not digital tools and toys at the center of cultural…
Read More…ss of respondents’ personal feelings about abortion, whether “the woman, family, and her doctor [should] make the decision or the government [should] make the decision.” Seventy-one percent of self-identified Republicans said they “strongly” felt that the woman, her family, and her doctor should make the call. Another 10 percent said they believed the same thing, but “not strongly.” Only three percent of Republicans strongly felt that government s…
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…she was drunk, which was the only way she could handle getting up behind a microphone. God was barely mentioned. When asked about the secular nature of the vigil and why he agreed to participate, Rios responded that “it is always the responsibility of clergy to act in moments of disaster, regardless of the secular tone and style.” Throughout the vigil, he said, “[I] kept thinking of Jesus and where this radical Rabbi was in moments of disaster. I…
Read More…n—where feminism is local, and has many colors, and isn’t always called “feminism” because “feminism” is owned and run by White women who bring White men in fighter planes—I felt wracked with discomfort. I heard the baristas’ assumptions about Middle Easterners and Muslims. I thought of Pakistani activists, scholars, lawyers, theologians, politicians, and laypeople that habitually allied themselves with feminist causes. I thought of women who stan…
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…ter’s move vocal supporters, Dave Daubenmire, is the creator of the town’s Minute Men United, a militant organization that endorses Christian theocracy. Two years ago, according to the Columbus Dispatch, Minutemen led protests at religious services of two local churches that embraced the gay community. Until the branding incident, Freshwater had been an active participant at Minutemen anti-abortion events. Daubenmire has characterized the Freshwat…
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…Museum of American History as well as a prolific writer who has written a number of pieces for RD. Gordon Haber spoke to Manseau by phone. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Tell us about the Jefferson Bible. What is it? Why did he do it? Jefferson wanted to distill the Gospels down to core teachings of Jesus as a moral teacher. So he went through copies of the Bible and cut out with a penknife everything that had to do with J…
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…who have sustained damage to the corpus callosum, a neural cable that transmits signals between the brain’s hemispheres, may be afflicted with alien-hand syndrome, in which one hand reaches out and grabs things (including other people) without any conscious intent on the part of its mortified owner. Neurosurgeons preparing the brain of an epileptic before surgery can make the patient’s arm pop up like an eager student’s by electrically stimulating…
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…millions of minds.” The contagion metaphor of conspiracy theories is a framing so familiar in the study of radically different beliefs that it is, by this point, almost hackneyed. In repeating commonplace metaphors of conspiracy theories as brainwashing, something that, “took her mind,” as Cook writes of one QAnon adherent, little is added to help understand the particularity of conspiracy theories. Why, when there are two sisters raised together…
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…vic-minded citizens of an economically struggling Southern town or science-minded emissaries from the Vatican. This is something we all do, but Hopkinsville has an advantage: in addition to being the center of the nation’s eclipse craze, the town is also the site of one of America’s most documented encounters with creatures from a UFO. That story reveals that Hopkinsville has a long history of using heavenly oddities to sate very earthly desires….
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