Religion Dispatches
…Rev. Welton Gaddy, host of State of Belief radio, interviewed RD’s Neil J. Young on his most recent post, Leave it To Trump to Split a Catholic-Evangelical Bloc That’s Generations Old. Watch the interview below (just under 20 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=35&v=AQgtTjiEujE…
Read More…such stories not feel a little proud rush of patriotism, right? A slight welling up in the chest? I don’t mean to sound condescending here, but how can anyone not find such brave principled kids absolutely adorable? Ummm, actually there is one group that seems to hate stories about little kids standing up to bigotry. And that would be the American Family Association. Remember Will Phillips? He’s that adorable 10-year-old kid who in November garner…
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…ckbuster. In the chaos of the era print was cheap and plentiful, and the collapse of the licensing laws insured a degree of free speech hitherto unknown in the British Isles. The World Turned Upside Down would prove so enduring that it has been an English folk ballad for more than 350 years. The song’s opening verse, “Holy-dayes are despis’d, new fashions are devis’d. /Old Christmas is kicked out of Town” remains pertinent. It seems that a suppose…
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…quality” campaign with an ad featuring high-profile athletes like Serena Williams, LeBron James, and Megan Rapinoe. And for International Women’s Day, Nike announced a “Pro Hijab” for female Muslim athletes, with its own eye-grabbing (and controversial) video. These ads are inspirational—unless you believe that the factory workers making Nike sneakers, who are largely female and people of color, should actually be treated as equals! Almost twenty…
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Filed away in my office is a now-brittle and yellowed New York Times clipping from 1993 by the architecture critic Herbert Muschamp, who wrote: Exploding buildings are [the contemporary global] community’s landmarks—its inverted arches of triumph, its sinister Taj Mahals. They provide images of a collective experience that is otherwise elusive. Traditionally, we look to buildings to provide symbols of social cohesion. Exploding buildings now perf…
Read More…sexuals from ever being recognized as a ‘protected class.’” White quotes Will Perkins, the man behind the success of Colorado’s Amendment 2 in 1992 and convener of the secret meeting as saying, “If we lose this battle [against homosexuality and homosexuals], there are no moral absolutes left for this nation.” The purpose of the meeting was not to energize the superstars of the anti-gay movement, but to bolster a grassroots campaign that would take…
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…r Religion: How Unaffiliated Parents Are Raising Their Children? It was really my daughter’s questions that got me started with this. Sheila was three years old—that age when kids will ask why, why, why about everything. She started asking questions about religion. I remember driving home from preschool in December, and she spotted a giant plastic Santa in somebody’s front yard. “Mommy,” she asked, “Why does Santa come every year?” “To make people…
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…churches, speculation about his connection to Islam continues online as well as within the mainstream press, including an Op-Ed entitled “President Apostate” in the New York Times (May 12, 2008) by the military strategist and historian Edward Luttwak (and, exactly a week later, in a May 19 Christian Science Monitor Op-Ed entitled “Barack Obama–Muslim Apostate?”). Now, as if to flip the Muslim coin, Mr. Luttwak, Ms. Burki, and others speculate tha…
Read More…eek. By the way, it’s been described by the media as a compound. It’s actually a city block of fenced-in homes in a rather nice residential neighborhood with lovely landscaping. It’s so nice that at first, I figured I was at the wrong place. But then I saw the giant banner on the second-story house which serves as the church, “GodhatesAmerica.com” and the vandalized garage door with painted over, but still visible, penis and scrotum. Phelps and hi…
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