Religion Dispatches
…* We’re God’s chosen Tweeters! Finding God on Facebook Ah, God. Was there any good news for religions in the Pew report? Certainly, the report makes clear that the vast majority of believers and seekers of every age group, gender, and educational level are likely to be found on Facebook (92%), MySpace (28%), LinkedIn (18%), and Twitter (13%) on a regular basis, though participation varies in any platform based on demographic characteristics. Want…
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…-binding resolution on “protection of the family,” which was introduced by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, affirms “the natural and fundamental group unit of society” and urges UN member states” to “strengthen and support families.” To observers at both ideological poles, this resolution is most significant for what it does not say. A majority of Council members rejected a reference to the “various forms of the family”—favored by Western European states,…
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…call the older exclusionary craft unionism. They remember cranky George Meany and his ever-present cigar. They remember the building trades—Meany’s crowd—raining both bricks and brickbats down on an early anti-Vietnam War demonstration in the streets of New York. A whiff of foreign-ness: From the 1890s onward a huge quantum of trade union energy came from new immigrant groups that brought their social solidarity with them to the new world. Jews an…
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…he Muslim tradition is often far more human, humane, and humanistic than many current approaches assume and propose. But also because obligations are inseparable from the consequences of their performance. Which is to say, these aren’t rules meant to be applied irrationally or unthinkingly. Impacts and effects matter. That’s not even to get into the assumptions Islamic fundamentalists (and sometimes Islamophobes) depend upon. The most critical and…
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…$ reflects my particular genre tastes and sensibilities perhaps more than any other book I’ve read, and is a must read for any fan of horror. What’s your next book? I’m hoping to write a book about ‘Salem’s Lot entitled Legacy of the Marsten House. Celebrating its 40th anniversary in October, Stephen King’s novel has proven to be a work of lasting endurance, an urbane deconstruction of American life married to the mythology of Bram Stoker’s Dracul…
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…civil rights in Israel should be applauding the news, because there are many good reasons why President Obama should not visit the Western Wall. The New York Times quoted Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren as saying, “Everything on the Seder table—from the lamb shank to the parsley to the egg—is rife with symbolism. So, too, with every item on the president’s itinerary.” This is a timely comparison—Passover is just around the corner. But…
Read More…God, or he may strike us with plagues or with the sword.” But the king of Egypt said, “Moses and Aaron, why are you taking the people away from their labor? Get back to your work!” Then Pharaoh said, “Look, the people of the land are now numerous, and you are stopping them from working.” That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people: “You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bri…
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…k upon the stranger (Luke 10: 27-35). These mandates should be followed, many believe, because they are God’s words. But this doesn’t quite settle the refugee question even for many believers as we see from the range of responses. Part of the idea is obscured in the compactness of the phrase “God’s words.” This cannot mean blind obedience to Scripture as that would render us programmable dolls with no moral accountability. Morality requires the ab…
Read More…iginary crime” that created a Jewish people, in his judgment: Moses was an Egyptian monotheist who led a revolt out of Egypt, but his followers killed him in a revolt in the wilderness. What Freud was prepared to do, and felt we all should do, was candidly to assess religion’s role in fostering and sustaining violence. Religion is not only nice; it can also be nasty. And when it is armed, with guns and with ethnocentrism, then it is without a doub…
Read More…rch. The inscription beneath his stone image reads “God is great.” In Germany, a team of researchers have built digital models of synagogues destroyed by Nazis on Kristallnacht in 1938. Anglican vicar Alex Brown was convicted of performing 360 sham weddings for immigrants trying to stay in the UK. Vandalism against mosques and Islamic centers continues: There’s the vandalism in Madera, California and Hudson Valley, New York. Meanwhile, federal inv…
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