Religion Dispatches
…hey are all decidedly modern: the crisis in global capital (which still seems to me the singular crisis of the past decade); and the uninspiring forms of industrial warfare still alive and none-too-well in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are also some new trends worth tracking, and Religion Dispatches was formed in large measure to enable better reflection upon them. The first has to do with the continued advances in contemporary communications tech…
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…n days when it does not matter. Today it matters, though, and Robertson seems oblivious to the fact that today the rules have changed. Pat is undoubtedly bad public relations. But does Jesus need a PR firm? Shouldn’t He be able to take care of himself? Offended Christians should hold their existential crisis in check and act as they claim Jesus would. Suffering Haitian people don’t need a theological defense, be it one of judgment or love. They ne…
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…y theory. Pushing the right-wing populists towards race war and the open arms of America’s small but hungry white supremacist and neofascist movements are demagogues including Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, and Lou Dobbs. Buchanan claims, as noted above by Eric Ward, that our country was “built basically by white folks… America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.” Until the election of Scott Brown, the Democratic…
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…oman Catholic order established by Mother Teresa. The nun who answered the phone said she couldn’t give her name because they aren’t allowed to talk to the press. She did say, however, that the sisters who are in the order now were not in the order when the adoption home opened, so she wasn’t sure why it closed. She added that the order sold the Chevy Chase house in 2002. “We work with the poor and we didn’t have any work there because it’s a rich…
Read More…holic Church, I’ve been having some interesting conversations by email and phone with Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Some people have emailed me to say “right on.” Others, like some of my relatives, are just hurt, scared, and wondering if they can trust anything about their local priest, diocese, or bishop. I’ve received invitations to come and join the Episcopal Church (are you listening, Father Balmer?) but I am not quite “there” yet. Yet th…
Read More…tch ride outside the gates of the estate where I can have bars for my cell phone and get in touch with them later today. Before the shaykh arrives, I continue with my Qur’an reading. I don’t use the tiny mp3 player anymore because this last juz’ includes most of the Qur’an that I have memorized myself, and this is more a review than a simple reflective read. Coming to the end of the Qur’an reading is also melancholy, and I forget why I felt I shou…
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…the one that ties the Doctor’s hands. But to the extent that the Doctor himself seems to be able to bend (if not always break) whatever rules determine how history has to play out, while in some instances recognizing that a historical moment must be preserved, a key religious theme that is central to other popular science fiction shows like Lost and FlashForward is brought to the fore – namely destiny. And to the extent that history has to play o…
Read More…raphed a piece of paper on the dashboard of Roeder’s car: It contained the phone number of Cheryl Sullenger, Operation Rescue’s senior policy advisor, who served two years in prison for conspiring to bomb abortion clinics in 1988. Roeder also told me that Sullenger was present at the lunch with Newman where they discussed “justifiable” homicide, and that Newman had given Roeder the autographed copy of his book just three months before Roeder kille…
Read More…hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Nevada Senate race — along with several others like it — to achieve conservative victory. This plan includes running statewide television and radio ads, sending direct mail to targeted voters, and operating phone banks — all geared toward defeating Harry Reid in November. DeMint apparently does not think the Reconstructionists are an irrelevant fringe movement, as many others seem to think, since he’s pai…
Read More…rom the moment Freshwater feared losing his job, he has tried to present himself as a martyr to religious discrimination. He has argued that the case has been about the fact that he kept a bible on his desk. (In their lawsuit, the Dennis family never mentions the bible, nor was it an issue in their initial complaints to the school district.) Every step of the way, Freshwater and his lawyers have wrapped the cases in obfuscation and paranoid accusa…
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