Religion Dispatches
…never be discovered embezzling money, enjoying kinky sex, or (The Da Vinci Code notwithstanding) fathering surprise children. It’s not necessary to label something a “cult” to understand the potential peril involved in looking to a living guru. However honest and virtuous that guru might be, she—like the rest of us—is susceptible to tripping and falling right up until the day she dies. What makes some folks willing and able to trust in a charismat…
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…emand that every Jesuit imaginatively engage with Christ, surely to become better acquainted with the god-man, but also to know himself more intimately. Following the opening lines of Ignatius of Loyola’s guide, the purpose of undertaking this rigorous self-evaluation was “To overcome oneself and to order one’s life without reaching a decision through some disordered affection.” Yet a sense of self must be forged before it can be overcome. Each t…
Read More…he whole thing here. If you’re like me, you’ll applaud and resolve to be a better and braver person.) For this, according to Molpus, he received “a number of death threats and a host of bitter and sick correspondence.” Six years later, in Molpus’ unsuccessful gubernatorial bid, his opponent Kirk Fordice belittled him for having given the speech. Yet those who care about racial reconciliation in Mississippi called his speech a “watershed in Missip…
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…interactive nature of communications, he says, relativizes the distinction between producer and consumer so that “communication appears not only as an exchange of data, but also as a form of sharing.” The Pope’s recent creation of a personal Twitter account in December 2012 seems to have been an attempt to engage with this interactive world without compromising papal authority (though as Elizabeth Drescher notes here on RD, this is a nearly imposs…
Read More…efs; and is a non-profit organization as described in the Internal Revenue Code. Religious organizations protested that this four-pronged test would only exempt houses of worship, but not, say, a church that served people of different faiths through a soup kitchen. Under the new proposed rule (which is still subject to a public comment period), an employer seeking an exemption would only have to meet the forth prong of the test, thus widely expand…
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…a community everyone can enjoy and which also enables people to express different opinions,” said a YouTube spokesperson at the time. “This can be a challenge because what’s okay in one country can be offensive elsewhere.” International human rights treaties guarantee all citizens freedom of thought and freedom of expression. But these treaties are binding on states, not on the media corporations that enable the exercise of such freedoms. It rema…
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…fties also drive liberals insane by saying that there’s no real difference between Democrats and Republicans. In my view, this is a very sheltered, cozy, white, privileged thing to say—but if your scale of significance is not support for communities of color or fairness in the tax code, but rather alignment with cosmic forces of enlightenment, it makes some sense. Post-millennial lefties tend to be really scary, or really wacky, or both. In pop cu…
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…families in concrete ways. He’s talking about a “more family-friendly tax code.” He wants the government to pay people to procreate. It’s a “big government” Republicans can get behind—a “baby government.” Though women of childbearing age are the people Douthat wants to get busy getting pregnant, he doesn’t talk about women very much—or the social, physical, and financial costs women still pay for having kids. Douthat blames women without talking…
Read More…local concern that he wasn’t going to comment on, when he otherwise has (albeit in a perfunctory way) called for the promotion of women’s rights in other parts of the Middle East? And since Obama was promoting the rights and freedom of religious minorities last night, wouldn’t this case fall under his concern? There are good religion questions. They just don’t get asked….
Read More…nguish himself from his pal John McCain who seems willing to differentiate between extremist Muslims and the mainstream faithful. Those are important points, but they all overlook what is, perhaps, the most troubling aspect of this mini-scandal: it fits within a growing pattern of elite non-Muslims misappropriating Islamic phrases and insisting that the most extreme interpretations or uses are the correct ones. Think about the term “jihad.” It’s o…
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