Religion Dispatches
…ded Muslims, through nations and networks, to build partnerships that will last into the long term. Though it’s an awkward place for an American president to stand: Engaging a religious population so it can, with our government’s assistance, realize a different kind of religious consciousness. Because it could backfire. The last time we helped develop a network of Muslims who came together for common cause, it got messy; al Qaeda emerged from the…
Read More…limited to monitoring the progress of the Congressional Democrats’ sit-in last night mostly by Twitter. Still, what I saw was fascinating, and frankly, inspiring. It’s hard not to admire a 76-year-old John Lewis using the same tactics he used in the campaign against segregation for a new kind of liberation. We’ll come back to his determination later. First, to answer your questions: Was the sit-in a publicity stunt? Yes, and a successful one at t…
Read More…or one of the tarawih. I finally finished the Qur’an reading I had started last year and decided that now I’m at the point where it will take two years to read through. To be merciful with our aging is like Allah’s mercy with those parents: it’s a part of the Divine nature and I am grateful. Finally, and of course unique for this year, I learned that it is possible to blog your way through Ramadan, sharing many ideas along the way, and yet still k…
Read More…laborated that his priorities were: “…God first, others second, and myself last.” Which, erm, strictly speaking, would be GOM. But I gather he meant JOY. In any case, the only rekindled romance for a Koloff was teenage daughter Kolby’s getting back together with her boyfriend Micah. You can’t make me fall, but you can make me unreachable: Taylor Coleman said she was going to the store. Really, though, she went with her friends to have their pictu…
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…one recent example, Patriot Mobile—a NAR 7 Mountains Dominionism-inspired phone company in Texas—bankrolled the campaigns of 11 candidates for school board in the suburbs of Ft. Worth in May 2022. They all won, and they subsequently took control of four school boards. In one school district (but probably not the last) 40 books were soon pulled from the shelves for “review.” It remains to be seen whether book burnings will become more a part of th…
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…s full of food when rising ground water swamped his basement loaned me his phone. At the bar of a French restaurant that opened the day after the hurricane to serve red wine in plastic cups by candlelight, I learned that the proprietor had recently been convicted of starting a fire in the building during a bout of depression. The hurricane had made things worse, but he was going to lose his business anyway. This man, whom I had just met and who w…
Read More…ear and fascination with Vodou is also closely intertwined with issues of class and, especially, race. This matrix of associations is evident in the example of phone psychics like “Miss Cleo,” who uses an affected Caribbean accent. We also saw it in Pat Robertson’s gaffe following the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010, when he claimed that the nation of Haiti had made a pact with the Devil. Glassman conforms to no stereotypes about Vodou. B…
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…ation / Emanuel’s Pulse, a “pneumatic pact“ In Charleston and now Orlando, last year was this year’s future. Church and nightclub, sanctuaries of the Sacred, places for the celebration of (the) mass(es). Life’s (w)holiness, notwithstanding the bullet holes now in it. With vigilance, hold vigil with me. We know that neither Christianity nor Islam are reducible to the violence perpetrated in their names. Just as we didn’t reduce Christianity to Dyla…
Read More…g from pro-civil-union comments she made while visiting Harvard University last year, a shift “critics say is a play to attract Catholics and evangelical Christians.” After those comments last fall, a congressman resigned from the party “to stay firm in the defense of the principles and values of life and family.” Fujimori led voting in April elections but not by enough to avoid a runoff, which will be held on June 5. She is reportedly running nec…
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…ys after, I really started to question everything we’ve been doing for the last 10 years,” Sinno says, speaking by phone from a recent tour stop in San Francisco. “A big part of what we do and why we address politics and gender and class and whatever – be that through our music and through our positions in the public eye – a big part of that is about trying to create sort of a cultural roster for people to identify with and feel emboldened by. And…
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