Religion Dispatches
…ds of American jobs—up to an estimated 127,000. That’s Muslim money buying American goods, creating American jobs. That’s us benefiting from growth in the Gulf and Southeast Asia. That’s the world growing together. The Muslim world’s democratic convulsions—Indonesia preceded the Arab world by roundabout a decade—are responses to economic lethargy, with booming populations ravenous for rights, dignity, and prosperity. In short, thank the world’s la…
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…ing, the 2016 election has highlighted the enormous diversity of ways that Americans perceive honesty. But the territory of lying has always been contested. Even when the truth is clear-cut, certain questions remain slippery: what exactly does it mean to lie? When is it okay to lie? And what are the social, moral, and spiritual consequences of deception? To understand these issues better, I called up a historian of lying. Dallas Denery II is the a…
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…own descendants make. If those descendants exist. But for many native-born Americans there are fewer of them—fewer children and, as birthrates drop and marrying age rises, still-fewer grandchildren or none at all. This, in turn, says Douthat, has created a sense of alienation that is only further fueled by the decline of working-class communities and gives rise to “a grim vision of the future, in which after you’ve passed, your few kids and grandk…
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…ith basic union rights. It is unfortunate, in this context, that the latest 1800-word “let’s fix it” bill to come from House Democrats is called the HEROES Act, when in fact what their bill precisely does not do is maintain employment lifelines for first responders and others, whereas what it does do is heavily subsidize the private health insurance industry. “Nothing will ever be the same”: In all likelihood a whole lot will be the same, only wor…
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…rine Band playing some of the same “airs” it played for Thomas Jefferson in 1800. Compared to royal coronations, American inaugurations are remarkably simple affairs. But our ceremonies retain their own majesty and are capable of projecting a strong sense that something sacred is happening. Our inaugurations have always reflected a mashup of civil religion—invocations of our secular sacred texts, appeals to mystic chords of national memory—and bit…
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…unding the National Conservative movement is not without precedent. Between 1800 and 1950, Europe endured what amounted to a second Catholic Counter-Reformation. In the latter portion of the 19th century, predominantly Catholic countries in Europe—which of course European nations have largely been since the 1648 Peace of Westphalia—experienced an upsurge of royalist and irredentist passions to which the Catholic Church often attached itself (for e…
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…houris, dark-eyed women. We all know that Mohammad Atta, who flew American Airlines flight 11 into the Twin Towers on 9/11, was inspired by this promise. But among progressives, the sex promised to the righteous in the Qur’an isn’t sex as we know it, but something mysterious and sublime for which sex is a poetic stand-in. Second, what happens to our bodies in heaven? This is my favorite part of the heaven conversation. For if you believe in heaven…
Read More…er he defrauded parishioners in a Ponzi scheme. Archaeologists unearthed an 1800-year-old statue of the Buddha in India. In Iowa, a pastor is praying that the IRS comes after his church for his political campaign against three Iowa Supreme Court judges who ruled to allow same-sex marriages. The American Family Association has joined in the campaign against the judges. Finally, the words of one of the Chilean miners rescued after 69 days trapped in…
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On Christmas Day, 2009, as a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam prepared to land in Detroit, passengers smelled smoke and heard a series of bangs or popping noises. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old man from a prominent Nigerian family, was attempting to ignite an explosive device sewn into his underwear. He succeeded only in igniting himself—after his arrest, he had to be treated for second-degree burns on his hands and crotch. Inst…
Read More…help find the missing airliner by using the power of remote viewing, a form of ESP….
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