Religion Dispatches
…n Without Tarrying for Any!” foreshadowed Freedom Now! The Sixties were as American as apple pie or that great American hippie Johnny Appleseed. 3. Given the reality of the socially constructed cages we are trapped in, the Matrixes which we accept unknowingly, we have two choices. We can either make the cage as comfortable as can be for as many people equally as possible; Or we can try to break out of the cage, break out of the text, break out of…
Read More…conveniently written in English so that it can be understood by any plain American. He also shows how toxic this triple fundamentalism is to civic discourse where reasoned philosophical disagreement gives way to a mentality of holy war in which those with whom we disagree are not well meaning fellow Americans engaged in the democratic process, but instead, heretics. Lind is optimistic that “sooner or later, dogmatism and reality will collide,” an…
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…nd striking some as too political. When my book If God Meant to Interfere: American Literature and the Rise of the Christian Right was reviewed by one conservative Christian English professor, he complained that I “blamed” the Christian Right “(with scant justification) for all manner of America’s ills.” He went on to say that my “literary analysis rests on firmer footing than [my] political commentary.” In other words, stick to literary criticism…
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…the first African-American president—and then the first African- and Asian-American woman Vice President. They have seen the Supreme Court strip school-mandated Bible reading, prayer, and so-called “creation science” from public schools, even as evolution became standard fare. They have watched feminism challenge gender roles, and the Supreme Court legalize abortion and mixed-race marriage and then same-sex marriage. They feared losing their child…
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…ction and distribution enterprise. Fea succinctly describes it both as the American Bible Society, and the American Bible Society, capturing both parts of the argument woven throughout the work. Its initial goal in Bible distribution was to “link remote and scattered settlements into a Bible nation,” and in doing so, to spread the Word that could “produce good citizens, improve the condition of families, inspire men and women to exercise their God…
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…ish altogether,” but the stuff of “what is this Judaism that I’ve chosen.” American Jews are multitudes in our identities and ideologies, and I welcome the messiness. The choices that others make do not always conform to my own; but the acceptance of that difference is essential for me to want my own autonomous choices to be taken seriously as well. I’m also enthralled by the vast expressions of difference among Jews seeking a relationship to Juda…
Read More…rbella in 1630 (originally “city upon a hill”). Winthrop wasn’t suggesting American Exceptionalism (America did not yet exist of course), it was about the deal his flock had made with God. The sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity”—that’s right Charity—was about his shipmates’ charitable obligations to each other. A look at some other, less oft-quoted lines, may shed some light on what this founding (god)father intended by his powerful picture tha…
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…red in the NBC sitcom Outsourced. He played Rajiv, the officious assistant manager of the Mid-America Novelties call center. He may also be remembered playing Salim Ali Khan in the hit film American Desi. Rizwan has worked with director Mike Nichols and actor Tom Hanks in Charlie Wilson’s War and Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton in Morning Glory. Past TV credits include: Flash Forward, Privileged, Better Off Ted, Suite Life on Deck, and Hannah Monta…
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…dashes of covfefe nonsense entwine themselves with systemic gutting of the American Interior, the EPA, the National Park and Monument System, and other environmentally regulatory practices and ecologically creative passions. As Jay Michaelson wrote at The Daily Beast, “climate denial was ‘fake news’ before ‘fake news’ was a thing, and it’s part of the Republican mainstream, not the Trumpist fringe.” There’s a double bind here: we must acknowledge…
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…ly subservient to simple “facts.” The creation of new museums dedicated to American Indians or African American history and culture is a sign that some part of our civic culture is slowly waking up to the ways that Americans live—indeed have always lived—in different universes, though these undoubtedly intersect and overlap. There is simply no comparing the universe in which I live to the universe of George Washington, or for that matter the unive…
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