Religion Dispatches
…d for his “phony religiosity.” Obama, though, let that roll right off his back. By contrast, conservatives are starting to portray Giglio as a victim. Which is, of course, another sign that the culture wars are not over. *This post has been corrected to reflect Robinson’s role in the 2009 inaugural festivities….
Read More…me reactions to the controversy –Newt Gingrich compares Park 51 to a “Nazi sign next to a Holocaust museum,” a Taliban operative warns that “the more mosques [America] stops, the more jihadis [the Taliban] will recruit,” and a Muslim cab driver in New York is stabbed in an apparent hate crime fueled by Park 51 hysteria. As I witness emotions on both sides of the Park 51 debate reach a fever pitch, I am reminded of my father’s efforts to build a mo…
Read More…e them a password to speed things up at the next checkpoint, and we send a sign to the next check-point to let them know all is well. Today, we’ve added something less: are you with him, or against him? It was a different mood than yesterday. In traditional Muslim societies, its often been taken for granted that the existence of a bad ruler is better than no ruler at all—tyranny with security was better than anarchy. As such, by and large, religio…
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…centered on her enthusiasm for charter schools and her lavish spending to promote low-performing charters in Michigan and in Detroit in particular. While billionaire fascination with charters (and here the interventions of the Waltons and the Broads make the DeVos family look like pikers) is well worth exploring and exposing, the steady advance of state-level schemes to fund religious education using taxpayer funds barely breaks the surface of me…
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…, this quadrennial event offers an opportunity for reflection on signs and signifiers, those we flash to the world and to ourselves. What’s interesting about our overjoyed and prolific measuring in these days since Obama’s victory is perhaps what it reveals about us, not only in the magnitude of our hopes or the intensity of our projections onto the president-elect, but also in our longing and our crushing sense of powerlessness. As a Republican c…
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…aphor; both a physical marker of our place in human experience and also a ‘sign’ or ‘symbol’ read in ways that define our place in social organization. In short, bodies tell stories; but these stories require something of a physical presence. Our bodies carry something of our historical and cultural memory, and only so much of that memory can be communicated through body-less exchange. Text-messaging, tweeting, and so on provide opportunities for…
Read More…n called the “Karl Rove of Hispanic evangelical strategy.” Another notable signer is Mercer University professor and author David Gushee, who has refused to sign the Manhattan Declaration. Other names on the statement are no surprise like Rev. Debra Haffner from the Religious Institute, which strongly supports LGBT rights. I’m glad to see other names, including Geoffrey Black, the general minister of my own denomination, the United Church of Chris…
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…g religious movements, many of them strident, some of them lethal, are one sign of the xenophobic backlash to the notion of global citizenship. Rejection of foreigners and foreign ties—think of Brexit—is another. Anti-globalism also leads to another global phenomenon, the rise of demagogic popularist strong-men—and they are almost entirely men. Think of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt, Recep Erdogan in Turkey, Nar…
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…and the ecological. The variety of liturgies and rituals for Tu Bishvat is significant, and inspiring. On the other hand, so what? So a bunch of already-converted liberals get together and reaffirm their commitments to what they already believe. A few will decide that being vegan isn’t enough, and that they’ll stop eating honey as well. Some will sign a petition. Meanwhile, nothing will happen to slow climate change, preserve biodiversity, or save…
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…you are dust,” is what the priest or minister says as she or he makes the sign of the cross on one’s forehead. The significance of Lent is to teach us humility and to teach us gratitude for the gifts we have rather than lusting for things we do not have. Our English word “humility” comes from the Latin root humilis, meaning of or near to dirt, to humus. There’s an important clue here to what will renew our health, both individually and collective…
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