Religion Dispatches
…t of Martin Luther King’s assassination fielded celebratory calls as a telephone operator in Memphis, Tennessee, telephoned us to awake my four-year-old twins from their sleep. Through her sniffles and giggles, this loving grandmother and now proud American citizen, kept repeating, “you tell those babies Obama did it! Obama did it! Wake them up and let them know that “O’RockoBama” [my son’s pronunciation] really did win tonight!” And I also receiv…
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…surgery can make the patient’s arm pop up like an eager student’s by electrically stimulating the motor cortex. The patient often insists that she meant to move the arm and even invents a reason why: She was waving to that nurse walking by the door! Neurologists call these erroneous, post-hoc explanations confabulations. Some scientists argue that whenever we explain our acts as the outcome of our conscious choice, we are engaging in a kind of co…
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…e American past and present. He saw the Jefferson Bible as an important American historical object. It wasn’t just something left behind by a Founding Father, it was an object with a particular resonance. It seems so obviously an object that reinforces Jefferson’s deism, and yet some insist it is evidence of his orthodox faith. Christian nationalists cannot accept that Jefferson’s religious ideas don’t match their own. They claim that Jefferson wa…
Read More…essor went a step beyond outrage. She called upon the international and American community—via her undergraduates, if you please—to save Muslim women in the Middle East. America, she entreated, should penalize Middle Eastern nations. Any country that disadvantaged women to the extent that they could not easily pursue careers, and where they were married under family arrangements instead of purely personal choice, should not receive US aid. Heck, u…
Read More…te the same thing today. Since that piece was published in 2002, in the American church, some of those measures were taken, and although there are many cases that still need adjudication or resolution, the path to rectify the sexual abuse has, and continues to be addressed. As Thomas Reese, S. J notes, it took seventeen years for the American church to address the sexual abuse scandal properly. I recommend his article for its judiciousness in expl…
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…as drunk, which was the only way she could handle getting up behind a microphone. God was barely mentioned. When asked about the secular nature of the vigil and why he agreed to participate, Rios responded that “it is always the responsibility of clergy to act in moments of disaster, regardless of the secular tone and style.” Throughout the vigil, he said, “[I] kept thinking of Jesus and where this radical Rabbi was in moments of disaster. I kept…
Read More…ans and 50 percent of the general population identified as “pro-life”; the number of Americans who identified as “pro-choice” hit a record low. But respondents’ opinions on policy issues around abortion had not drastically changed from previous years. Just over half of Americans think abortion should be “legal under certain” circumstances, only 2 percent more people than last year. Meanwhile, 25 percent of Americans (compared to 27 percent in 2011…
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…spiritual practices play an increasingly important role in the lives of American seekers and believers, and ministers seeking relevance are wise to link traditional religious practices to the activities of daily life. But where blessing mobile phones, family pets, bicycles, and so on gets it wrong is in failing to invite the spiritual experience and creativity of believers back into the formal faith setting. Believers in the Digital Reformation ar…
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…he church in our spiritual-but-not-religious age. Do you think that the American church can recover from it? I think it depends on whether the American church decides to live into an identity that affirms the love of God for all people. It’s not like it’s a wound from the past. It’s a wound in the present. Everyone wants live into Easter, but no one wants to be on Good Friday. Everyone wants to live in Resurrection, but no one wants to recognize t…
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…fined as a vagrant. So members always carried five dollars and money for a phone call. Benjamin Zeller, author of Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion, has also noted that Heaven’s Gate members engaged in a lot of self-deprecating humor because they were aware that mainstream society perceived them as crazy. This research led Jones to conclude that a comedy about Heaven’s Gate might not be as inappropriate as it sounds. “I could never make a come…
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