Religion Dispatches
…violence committed by self-identified Christians and Muslims. More than 8-in-10 (83 percent) Americans say that self-proclaimed Christians who commit acts of violence in the name of Christianity are not really Christians. In contrast, less than half (48 percent) of Americans say that self-proclaimed Muslims who commit acts of violence in the name of Islam are not really Muslims. …
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…urdered, then another, then another, then another…six million times.” But, really, who could live like that? So who’s really the hero in this film? The irascible but lovable Herschel Greenbaum who has little to lose because he has nothing—nothing, that is, except for kaddish, except for death? Or Ben Greenbaum, a hapless hipster who seems to have much to gain, though everything eludes him because he can’t quite face the tragic death of his parents…
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…eplied: “Why not start writing it now?” So I decided I would, and before I really knew what was happening I had written a third of it. I’m very glad he pushed me to try my hand at writing it… I probably would’ve told myself I was too young and inexperienced to write it for another few decades. And though it is far from perfect, I’m really proud of this book, and think it is timely. What’s the most important take-home message for readers? I wrote F…
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…heories keep coming. They may sound scientific—they usually do—but they’re really about the “feel,” as you say. The most successful Eden in terms of number of people convinced would have to be Joseph Smith’s Eden, in Independence, Missouri, and he was convincing because his followers considered him a prophet. Nothing’s supposedly weaker in philosophy than an argument from authority, yet nothing seems to work on people better… For sure. Smith was r…
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…as followed have set off a fierce debate among LDS people: is this what we really believe? Is this what we really teach? Or is this kind of object lesson fringe? Isn’t it unfair to pin Smart’s feelings of post-rape worthlessness on her religion? Fringe it is not. This post at a Mormon women’s blog (and its many comments) document that sexual morality object lessons featuring spent chewing gum, or molested flowers, or damaged cupcakes have indeed b…
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…iously, on a range of complex factors that are not explained solely by the numbers, even the declining numbers, of white evangelicals in the South, or even of declining numbers of conservative Protestants, whether defined as evangelical or mainline. As I noted in my earlier post, intensity and turnout will drive the outcome of these races. Regardless of the outcome, though, one thing is certain: there is going to be an ongoing dissection and discu…
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…essay we published the previous week. The piece’s headline, Is Sam Harris Really a White Supremacist?, was provocative, but it wasn’t a random ad hominem attack; a critic at Salon had recently suggested that Harris, a prominent atheist writer, was espousing white supremacy. Others have made similar charges in the past. And regardless of what you think of Harris’ reasoning, there’s no question that some of his claims about Islam have started to so…
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…I think it’s at play. And what’s preventing us from seeing it for what it really is is that it remains the blessing of the church on racial violence. That’s a hard thing to see, I think, but I think it’s an important thing to see if we’re not going to repeat those mistakes in the future. It is this kind of coverup; this attempt to forget; a kind of forced amnesia. It’s quite remarkable really. And I’m reminded of this searing quote from James Bal…
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…stion is why some of us find the story more satisfying if the vampires are really aliens, and the magic deep down is supposedly really science. Arthur C. Clarke famously said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But that statement is an affirmation of faith—faith that science will one day turn magic into reality, and make the impossible possible. And so by exploring the relationship between sci-fi and fantasy, a…
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…an leave it behind. I don’t think it’s a sustainable security or that it’s really the church. Especially as religion in America changes and the demographics are changing and people aren’t really going to church anymore, I think it’s more important than ever to get down to what a faith community is supposed to be. Again, I think the sacraments give us some guidance in that way. The church has always been practicing communion. What does that mean in…
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