Religion Dispatches
…The revelation of these memoranda and of the use of such techniques is the best recruiting tool we could ever have given to al-Qaeda. Again, does waterboarding have utility or not? Does it create more pain than pleasure? These questions have pretty well defined the contours of the current debate. Buried near the end (at page 37) of the fourth memorandum, dated May 30, 2005, is a discussion that gives away the lie that this is a debate about utilit…
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…ve in front of you. And I just don’t believe in truth. I think we have the best attempt to reach these truths, and we can make the best decisions as we have all this information in front of us, but the scientific method would always say: you’re going to have to re-prove it. I think that humility is the cornerstone of an advancing species. It’s the ability to say “I don’t know, but I’m going [to] move forward carefully with reason.” I agree with yo…
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…is the tool of innocence; so many of these armed men said, “the gun is the promotion of peace.” But it’s also simultaneously the transgression. That’s what the thrust of “Thy Rod” and the sexual innuendo of it means—the way that’s also the transgression of a White man who’s doing his best James Brown imitation. Because in that imagination, Blackness is a kind of sexuality, and Kunnemann possesses that potent sexual power in the same way that he cl…
Read More…Catholics, black Protestants, and the unaffiliated “all believe America’s best days are ahead of us.” Jones called the pessimism/optimism gap a “deep cultural divide,” associated with a perceived decline in the influence of white men. “White working class Americans are less happy and less apt to say our best days are ahead of us,” he said. Relatedly, and not surprisingly, PRRI found that supporters of Donald Trump are more likely than even other…
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…hers, the paper’s site was part of a group of Russian-backed websites that promoted Nazism, antisemitism, and anti-Black racism for an American audience, though this one stood out as a site that specifically sought to play a disruptive role going into the 2020 elections. The paper began as a Pennsylvania politics blog in April 2020. It was, according to Hatewatch, “mirrored online by a Russian website… affiliated with creators of the pro-Kremlin p…
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…e plain, it becomes obvious that the debate over the new traditionalism is best construed not as a debate between traditional and modern varieties of ethical discourse, but rather as a debate involving at least two traditions or strands of modern ethical discourse: a tradition dedicated to a very narrow conception of how traditions ought ideally to operate and a tradition dedicated to the project of loosening up that conception democratically and…
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…of the first design contests he held. He asked people to come up with the best design possible for a mobile AIDS clinic for a town in a country in Africa. He posted the deadline, and he waited. He didn’t think anyone would submit anything, but on the day of the contest’s deadline, a delivery man from Federal Express rang the doorbell to his tiny studio apartment in New York City. He was carrying a huge bag stuffed with envelopes. “Wow,” the found…
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…m the well-defined offices of traditional denominations, everything NAR is best understood as a work in progress. Fortunately, NAR founders and current leaders have some working definitions, as they figure out how to seize the 21st Century with their vision of First Century Christianity. Movement founder C. Peter Wagner distinguished between those who possess the gift (mentioned by God in 1 Corinthians 12) and those who hold the office of apostle….
Read More…such as Bruce Lincoln have contended that these speeches were specifically coded with theological language which would appeal to the ears of Bush’s evangelical audience and demonstrate a much tighter connection between Bush’s understanding of Christianity and American policy and mission. Bush’s claim about the divinely granted nature of rights yields “the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to b…
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…does little to resolve them. Rather, it paints them as somehow useful, and best addressed through the tools of spiritual insight—a spiritual insight in service of unchecked material acquisition. Did members of that church really need to lose hard-earned money in order for their God to provide them a vital lesson? Where’s the compassion in that? The situation is best addressed by recognizing the manner in which greed and a misguided sense of the re…
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