Religion Dispatches
…ead this nascent religious democracy, their religious ideas simultaneously sanctioned social hierarchies. Our religious history is full of this intensely paradoxical interplay of religious freedom and equality with religiously-sanctioned unfreedom and inequality. That story is typically reduced to the fight against slavery—as it mostly is in this series—though it goes far beyond that. In this dialectic of religious freedom and unfreedom, embattled…
Read More
…ving into Clinton’s religious history, we studied her relationships with a number of spiritual mentors, including Tikkun’s Michael Lerner, who was soon replaced by “sacred psychologist” Jean Houston, who famously helped the First Lady get in touch with the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt. Later, after Mother Teresa died, Clinton invoked the spirit of the nun as her guiding light so religiously that one might be excused for wondering whether she meant i…
Read More
…u 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 as far as the People’s Republic of China. Not without reason, the 20th century’s question of why free markets has been re…
Read More
…for shying away from hot-button religious culture war battles, “visited by phone” with Rowan County, Kentucky court clerk Kim Davis yesterday, according to a statement issued by his campaign. “I let her know how proud I am of her for not abandoning her religious convictions and standing strong for religious liberty,” the former pastor, Arkansas governor, and now two-time presidential candidate said in a statement. Arguing that “the Supreme Court c…
Read More…not-religion so very clearly and abruptly. We didn’t have to change in the phone booth, as it were, into the non-religious as we transitioned abruptly from ritual to rat race. It was not so very problematic for one to bleed over into the other. And during Ramadan, we grew up to expect lighter workloads. Migrant workers in certain Gulf countries learned to expect total lack of productivity and sometimes a complete absence of office workers during R…
Read More
…own legislative agenda. In any case, this is all really very simple: partisan problems have partisan solutions. To stop the extremist conservative agenda, Democrats have to step through the minefields of race and religion to take more than just a few conservative districts away from the Republican party. That’s the very definition of a partisan project, and it’s the only thing that will work. The only way “to protect our neighbors and our nation…
Read More
…in the “real” physical environment of the player, as mediated through the phone’s camera. As one player told a reporter: “This is full on escapism, where I’m like ‘let me just go catch some Pokémon and ignore the news.’” What news is she talking about? The murders of Sterling and Castile and the Dallas police officers. She is referring to the news of death. But in a matter of days Pokemon Go has changed our relationship with death. This is new te…
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…
Read More
…ender movie. As for the plot itself, it’s simple. McCarthy’s CIA analyst Susan Cooper is bureaucratic wallpaper given an opportunity to come to life… and does she snatch it. For years, Cooper’s been the insecure and dowdy second fiddle, working as the phone operator for suave CIA superagent Bradley Fine (Jude Law), guiding him past every danger even as he is oblivious to her obvious affections. You and I know there’s no way roles aren’t eventually…
Read More
…y proposal. It’s also pretty well known that he seems to be a deeply unpleasant person—something that can be confidently deduced from his snarky opinions as a judge on the Highest Court of the land; the way he behaves during oral arguments; and let’s be honest, his behavior during most of his public appearances where he performs a mightily embittered form of victimization. All in all, we’ve long known Sam Alito is as right-wing as the day is long….
Read More