Religion Dispatches
…e watched death on our smartphones. We witnessed the light drain out of Philando Castile’s eyes and we knew that the stillness of Alton Sterling’s body after the bullets were fired was that of death. We watched. On smartphones and tablets and laptops and televisions, we watched real people die. As Luvvie Ajayi has written, these images and videos “desensitize us to black death” and numb us to the violence done against black bodies—a powerful truth…
Read More…some polls the combined total equals or even outscores the economy as the number one issue on the voters’ minds. Two out of the three campaigns are actively pushing the war back onto center stage. Hillary Clinton recently said: “Since we now know Sen. McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that.” Well, we may not all know it yet. Apparently Obama and his people…
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…er irrelevant Easterner whose motives never matter, whose first (and only) language is force. Fakhri is not the only Bollywood bombshell to land in Hollywood; this fall, on ABC, Indian actress and model Priyanka Chopra will be starring in Quantico, which doesn’t just boldly star an Indian actress playing a, um, white protagonist alongside a cast which includes a woman in a headscarf—butthey’re all FBI agents. Good guys. Spy‘s Lia is a bad guy, and…
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…lected politician. Alito is one of nine judges on the highest court of the land, with a lifetime appointment. What seems striking isn’t just the support for insurrection itself (which is horrifying)—but the proud, almost mocking display of these political leanings. This is a Supreme Court Justice, who is openly, seemingly for months, flying a flag that supports the insurrection—while a case lands at the Supreme Court, which he gets to judge, about…
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…y celebrate the change as triumph for their convictions, even if the resemblance is coincidental. “Depending on where you stand, they’re right, or not.” Maybe it is time to get the muftis on the phone after all. In the United States, at least, religious leaders and politicians have deferred some of society’s most pressing ethical concerns to the wisdom of the market. Calls that the “end of history” lies with neoliberal capitalism are being heard a…
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…ceptive coverage after being informed by the university that it no longer planned to do do. And presumably this information was transmitted to their insurers by some administrative means, be it a phone call, email or letter. So after years of fighting the mandate, and accusing women’s health advocates and public health official of not understanding why it was a violation of their faith for their insurer to provide birth control that they neither a…
Read More…and within days an official at LDS Church headquarters placed a concerned phone call to Melanie S.’s local clergy. Three times her bishop met with Melanie to discuss the video. Because she had affiliated with “Mormons for Marriage,” he questioned whether or not Melanie and her husband should be allowed to keep their temple recommends—certificates that allow the most worthy and devoted Mormons to participate in the faith’s sacred temple rites. Nor…
Read More…one can keep away. And my Zappos shoes person recounted almost missing a plane, landing without her bags, but how she and her husband still managed to get there, because “once Allah invites you, then no one and nothing will keep you away.” So I tried to be optimistic. It didn’t help that my daughter accused me of the contrary. Or rather, she asked: aren’t you ever optimistic? I told her about waiting for the visa and how NOT being optimistic was…
Read More…ct at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, told me in a phone interview that he had “replied directly to him about how he could get off the list.” Potok pointed out that the main reason Lively is included on the list is because “in our view he consciously lies about, and defames, gay people. His theory of the Holocaust is equivalent to the flat Earth theory. It’s obvious to us that he has to know his allegations are completely f…
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…Child is a direct relationship with a higher power, whether that is in the language of God, Allah, Hashem—whatever the language may be, whether it’s Judeo-Christian at all. That living transcendent relationship is, according to science, where the greatest protective benefits are found. There are other spiritual and religious paths that support that, and interact with that. For instance, going to church or temple supports the development of a perso…
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