Religion Dispatches
…t is hard to imagine a potential convert needing a metaphor to be laid on this thick. That’s not to say that everything Jesus Didn’t Tap makes is as over-the-top. One of the more moving images can be seen on its How Do You Train? T-shirt. The rhetorical question is accompanied by the image of Jesus carrying the cross—on his way to Golgotha, no doubt. Frank tells me a joke he hears often: “Jesus didn’t tap… because he couldn’t.” I get it. Jesus’s a…
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…ded to protect religious and various other freedoms, but proponents argue this is a thinly veiled attempt to roll back anti-discrimination protections for LGBTI people. The Guardian has more on the dispute over the extent of religious exemptions that should be included in a marriage equality law: On Saturday the no campaign’s Coalition for Marriage pushed for broad exemptions to discrimination law to allow service providers to refuse any weddings…
Read More…secret he reveals intimately for the first time, a secret that could cost him his life: Nur is now Australia’s first openly gay Imam. “Reconciling spirituality with sexuality is a very difficult journey,” he says. Warsame says people face huge risks to come out in the Muslim world or Islamic communities “because the losses are too high, the risks are too great, I mean there is even a risk to your life because the conservative school of thought in…
Read More…especially, race. This matrix of associations is evident in the example of phone psychics like “Miss Cleo,” who uses an affected Caribbean accent. We also saw it in Pat Robertson’s gaffe following the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010, when he claimed that the nation of Haiti had made a pact with the Devil. Glassman conforms to no stereotypes about Vodou. Born in Maine, her parents were of Ukrainian Jewish heritage but were not religious. S…
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…ezers full of food when rising ground water swamped his basement loaned me his phone. At the bar of a French restaurant that opened the day after the hurricane to serve red wine in plastic cups by candlelight, I learned that the proprietor had recently been convicted of starting a fire in the building during a bout of depression. The hurricane had made things worse, but he was going to lose his business anyway. This man, whom I had just met and w…
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…And nobody can deny the convenience of ready access to information, maps, phone numbers, calendars, and social satisfaction that our reliance on technology provides. Technology is a tool, right? It doesn’t change who we are, right? It doesn’t blind us—it reveals reality by connecting us and showing us the world via our screens… right? Look, I know that our new imaginative, mediated work is doing good. I know people can feel a real sense of empowe…
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…tin, the human being. He did not see Trayvon Martin, a young, 17-year-old child on his way home from the convenience store with Skittles and a soft-drink and talking on his cell phone with his friend. Instead, all that Zimmerman could see was a hooded threat. And so, he deputized himself to be the police, and in that capacity shot Trayvon Martin dead. But more than just deputizing himself to act with police power (and this is the crucial point of…
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…rand-daddy of all Left Behind books, The Late Great Planet Earth), devoted his television show to this very question: “Are UFOs Real?” If you missed the show, here it is on Lindsey’s website. Lindsey’s short answer to CNN’s question is that yes, indeed, UFOs are real and fully understandable, almost predictable, in terms of Lindsay’s dispensationalist end-times scenarios. They are literal demons and are further evidence for a plot that is “subtly…
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…New York Muslims dreaded the approach of Ramadan in the summer, to say nothing of this year’s unbearable humidity. But I was worried about Ramadan for months now, and for another reason. When the first sliver of a crescent moon is sighted, it marks the beginning of a new month (or a new year). Some Muslims have adopted calculation in advance, choosing to figure out the months well in advance. Makes it easier to plan. Others, myself included, like…
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…ly is trying to harmonize with nature, but he also needs to make soy-free chickens for his customers who are demanding soy-free chickens. So he’s feeding them fish meal, which is manifestly unnatural. When I asked him about that he acknowledged that we all have to choose our compromises. In the book you explore a number of social domains—diet, birth control, parenting, economics, alternative medicine—where what’s “natural” is considered to be what…
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