Religion Dispatches
…tutional aspects. LH: How have you handled it? MH: I don’t teach Bible classes, so the closest I come to the example you posed is in my class on conflicts between the religious right and left since World War II. Since many of these conflicts involve the Bible, I give students a set of Bible passages—a sort of “greatest hits” package—and ask them to write down what these passages say about (1) relations between women and men, (2) slavery, and (…
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…a prima donna, given her stature. This is someone who had issue a parking ticket to India’s Prime Minister some time during a career that spanned police work, book writing, UN advising, tennis championships, and the Magsaysay Award (a.k.a. Asia’s Nobel Prize). I had a vision of our meeting. She would pour tea for us in the serene and ordered living room of her expansive hotel suite, sitting erect in the crisp khaki Indian Police Service uniform I…
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…ly black, a stadium full of white people who paid more than a Benjamin for tickets is not going to be the nexus for authentic justice conversations. I work for a white, affluent, suburban, mega-church, so I’m used to that. But at that moment, before the music even started, I knew what my friend was referencing—I was about to get spiritual too. “They knew they were born to weep and keep the morticians employed as long as they pledge allegiance to t…
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…the church is the last truly segregated public space in America. How about class? Does Christianity have anything helpful to say about class? Perhaps. You might hear “blessed are the poor” on any given Sunday, but more likely you will hear “blessed are the poor in spirit.” The words of Jesus are assumed to be about your spiritual life, not your finances—unless, of course, you attend one of the larger, far more successful churches where the “prospe…
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…d for it): UK Justice Norris found in 2008 that out of an IBO [Independent Business Owners] population of 33,000, “only about 90 made sufficient incomes to cover the costs of actively building their business.” That’s a 99.7% loss rate for investors. The scheme appears to be falling apart in the US, UK, and Australia hence the beefed up prime-time ads in the US. Many of [Amway’s] highest-level distributors have left to join other multilevel marketi…
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…eal with the messy question of good, bad or failing empire. It’s all about business, 24/7. Perhaps the business model is the most controversial way to think about the term “empire.” America as the purveyor of “popular culture” and capitalism puts it squarely in the empire business. The idea is already firmly entrenched around the world. American brands can be found everywhere, and the television shows and media are available to all. Perhaps that’s…
Read More…aid the boy was being deprived of educational instruction during the Bible class and that the class violated the First Amendment. Shelly warned board members that the district could be forced to pay $100,000 to $800,000 when it inevitably lost. Board members voted 6-0 last week to immediately end the Bible class, drawing boos from a crowd of students, parents and community members who had shown up to speak in support of the program. In the Chattan…
Read More…percentage, twice as many women in third class died as did women in first class; children in first class had nearly three times the survival rate of those in third. One would only use “raw numbers” if one was trying to make a point not supported by the numbers. In biblical patriarchy, the refrain of “women and children first” hides an agenda whereby the women are “first” only insofar as they keep their place which is subordinate to men. I wrote a…
Read More…c and moral crisis.” Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina: LGBT Life on Europe’s ‘Frontier’ Liam Hoare at Slate examines the precarious lives of LGBT people on “the European Union’s frontier,” where “people’s identities are defined by their ethnicity or religion, in opposition to other ethnicities and religions.” Because Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina hope to join the European Union, LGBTQ people there are at least afforded some degree of legal protection…
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…erican English like everyone else in this Hollywood backlot version of the frontier, but they also seem to have an endless supply of secret words with private meanings. “There is a Jewish word, rachmones,” Mr. Singerman says, explaining an unexpected act of charity Albert has just witnessed. “It means in English ‘compassion.’ Life without rachmones is not worth living.” A few minutes later, while planting an acorn to take the place of the lumber h…
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