Religion Dispatches
…usha would call suicidal fashion, back and forth, my unborn Raihana wedged between me and the steering wheel. I wonder if, had we been in the UAE during my pregnancy, Svend and I would have been held accountable for not being wealthy enough to afford a chauffeur for my OB visits. Perhaps Svend should be fined for not taking off work every time I had an OB appointment. Perhaps all of our friends ought to be fined for not offering to drive me. Indee…
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…y will speculate that Tebow sensed the tribulation that was to come in the Georgia Dome on Saturday and chose the verse accordingly: On the gridiron, tribulation; but peace in Christ Jesus. Still, that seems more like reading omens than Christian Bible study. Bumper-Sticker Spirituality I have struggled in the past several weeks to come to terms with my own apparent prejudices. Something about these painted Bible verses offends me, and I have not…
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…t ran a pool service and supply business in California and reportedly felt betrayed politically, especially by state Democrats. This sense of betrayal pushed her toward the QAnon conspiracy theory. Being angry about homelessness and the costs of running a small business in California fueled a sense of grievance that politicians—those nefarious elites—weren’t working in her favor, which is the populist logic underlying QAnon’s more phantasmagoric c…
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…rvative radio host and commentator Glenn Beck. Tyler Perry is a staple for better or worse (no pun intended) in black communities, and he is making a lot of money through the marketing of a very specific theological message—a message that was really painful to witness in this most recent film. It’s a message that is navigated by Perry’s preposterous plot structure. In Madea’s Witness Protection George Needleman (Eugene Levy) is the CFO of a Wall S…
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…vil conversation. And I don’t want to sound like a Luddite, but it’s about better use of social media and better mental hygiene. We need to strip this down to fundamentals. We have to acknowledge the uncertainty and distress that leads to extremism while absolutely not giving a platform to wild conspiracy theories. It’s like we’ve been trying to walk and chew gum at the same time. We have coddled those views and given them a platform in the belief…
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…rator Markus Lloyd argues that the Maafa “did not end when the slaves were freed… a hidden racial agenda is keeping the Maafa alive into the 21st century.” That sounds true enough, though Lloyd isn’t talking about poverty, or educational disparities, or the legacy of Jim Crow—he’s talking about family planning and abortion rights. What follows is a highly selective, distorted history of the reproductive rights movement. To be sure, that movement h…
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…ermal implants. A similar bill has just passed the house in Tennessee. The Georgia State Senate also passed an anti-microchip bill last month, sponsored by two Chips: Republican State Senators Chip Pearson and Chip Rogers, both Baptists and active in their churches. Beast 2.0 The sponsors of these bills, all of them Republicans and outspoken conservative Christians, claim that preventing the forced implantation of microchips is a civil rights issu…
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…rywhere—a recent poll indicated Clinton has grabbed a four percent lead in Georgia, for example—the Utah numbers invite further investigation. In Slate, historian Max Perry Mueller provided critical insight last week contextualizing Trump’s poor standing among Mormons within the LDS Church’s long history as victims of religious persecution and its more recent emergence as a global faith. Having once faced extermination orders, Mormons, Mueller arg…
Read MoreI have been in the lovely north Georgia mountains for the past two days; it’s the loveliest time of year here. This is where the Appalachian Trail begins, the long cascade of Blue Ridge) Mountains nearby at the peak of their fall color, all the brilliant leaves still on the trees. It is the time for the big fall festivals as well—Apple Festival in Ellijay, Octoberfest in Helen, Sorghum and other festivals scattered about. The people, poorer the f…
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…verred, “is predict which individual upon hearing the rhetoric of clear or coded incitement will turn to violence.” Berlet’s essay was titled “Heroes Know Which Villains to Kill: How Coded Rhetoric Incites Scripted Violence.” Indeed, villain identification has been going on for a long time, and NAR leaders are now featuring ancient scripts for modern violence and religious war. We hear it in the form of imprecatory prayers by religious and politic…
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