Religion Dispatches
…otections, they certainly weren’t lobbying for religion to be removed as a class currently protected by hate crimes laws. You can bet that if anyone yelled anti-Christian slurs while assaulting or killing someone the religious right would be screaming for the maximum penalty available under their “special right” to hate crime protection. What puzzles me the most in all of this is the religious right’s insistence that they have some inalienable rig…
Read More…ence of Catholic Bishops, which has long had an alliance with Catholic pro-business conservatives and neocons, but, it turns out, not the white working class voters who are supporting Trump. It seems that if you don’t have a job and are watching your community crumble around you from years of economic stagnation, “defending religious freedom” or “rebuilding our marriage culture” as defined by the Catholic right are of little concern. And while Geo…
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…ize coverage. “…at the very moment when digital capitalism is exacerbating class inequality, social media is catalyzing attitudes of racism, sexism, and nativism among those who fear losing the socio-economic privilege they once enjoyed.” That discrepancy is perhaps unsurprising, given Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous off-hand quip that “a squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa….
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…Catholic Thought, a collaboration of clergy and laity, has sponsored these classes for years. Classes offered at the university have existed alongside much more didactic classes in Catholic theology held at the Institute in the basement of the St. John’s Newman Center residence halls right on campus. In some respects, of course, this agreement to offer theology courses in a public university may be controversial. However, it was never funded from…
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…d on which candidate presented themselves as most in touch with the middle class, few questioned the very idea of a middle; a class that, by definition, assumes the continued existence of the lower class. The Nation of Islam speaks to those sensitive to that void, whether or not those listeners buy into Nation theology and tactics. Lawrence Mamiya, a professor of Religion and Africana Studies at Vassar College, contends that while the Nation suppo…
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…n Industrial Complex” (RIC)—that self-perpetuating and mutually justifying class of political consultants, Democratic Party-related think tanks, and conveyor-belt journalists. Part of what launched the debate is that this combination has, among other things, manufactured and brought to market a new product line, the Faux Religious Left, whose purpose is, as Silk reports, to serve as a “counterpoise” to the Religious Right. Like Genuine Faux Leathe…
Read More…I facilitated a heated debate about Pussy Riot in my Religion and Society class after a Russian student gave a presentation on the trial that involved her distributing copies of the lyrics of the “Punk Prayer.” That resulted, some weeks later, in a panicked phone call from an administrator asking if I had taught Pussy Riot lyrics. The incident blew over, but the ban on LGBT “propaganda” was passed at around the same time. And I would be lying if…
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…where my students are coming from makes me a more effective teacher. In a class of thirty, I was able to get about three-fourths to respond. With the exception of one, each expressed a negative view of “religion.” I don’t teach in some secular bastion of higher education, where such responses to “religion” might be par for the course. I teach at a small, church-affiliated school located deep in the eastern quadrant of the Bible Belt, in rural Nor…
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…itter account to express vocal support for REAP’s efforts, which include a class action lawsuit against the Department of Education that seeks “to end the sexual, physical and psychological abuses perpetrated under the religious exemption to Title IX at thousands of federally-funded schools, colleges and universities across America.” https://twitter.com/C_Stroop/status/1504209593139798018?s=20&t=WEnRqUAaWmEAnBbeLaLUbg As Southwick informed me, the…
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…y change in behalf of the poor, but I’m also all for churches inviting the business leaders in their midst to get to know some poor people—to get to know what being poor in American is really about, which is losing their voice and losing their personhood. Invite the business community leaders to apply their smarts and their hearts to shaping something new, to creating new opportunities for the lost and the least. We American Protestants have a str…
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