Religion Dispatches
…nation. In the name of God, King condemned America for killing the poor of Vietnam and neglecting the poor at home. Romans crucified Jews and Christians; Americans carpetbombed, mined, and napalmed the Buddhists of Vietnam. (By the way, unlike Jesus, King and Wright do not call their critics “vipers” and the “children of Satan.” Jesus was often nice, but in his demonizing mood he could be quite nasty.) So I say to you dear Geraldine Ferraro, if Wr…
Read More…and devotion to America even while being tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, Everhart stated, “John McCain is kind of like Jesus Christ on the cross. He never denounced God, either.” McCain, the occasionally foul-mouthed and short-tempered Senator who has yet to be baptized after nearly two decades of attending a Baptist church, seems like any other fallible human to be a far cry from the example of Jesus. Although he did suffer during Viet…
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…mith Colleges where he majored in English. While in prep school during the Vietnam War, he encountered “a yellow covered book with big black letters on the shelf in study hall.“ The book was Gandhi’s Autobiography. “My eyes were opened about what it meant to stand up to the mighty British Empire that occupied his native India, as well as to apartheid in South Africa.“ Clarkson told Religion Dispatches that that chance encounter was his “opening in…
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…h Asia as a continuation of British colonial influence. The parallels with Vietnam are striking: in Vietnam the United States also appeared to be replacing a colonial power, the French. Many in Afghanistan see the US military as a curious repetition of yet another military intruder, in this case the Soviets. Though the US policy might intend to help fight terrorism in the region, the very presence of US forces helps to create the climate of hostil…
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…ces, The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s second inaugural. And Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial is nothing short of the most significant piece of public sculpture of the late twentieth century; one that, notably, invites its own careful reading. Unfortunately, all of these works also reveal what makes the more recent World War II Memorial so dreadful. As Savage notes, its proud, vertical pillars of white marble (adorned by sculpted wreaths) s…
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…he impact of this, according to a report from the Mississippi Coalition of Vietnamese American Fisherfolk and Families, is that 80 percent of Vietnamese and Southeast Asian families in the Gulf will feel some economic squeeze. Of the 40,000 Vietnamese families living in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, one in three works in the seafood industry. For Louisiana, most of the Vietnamese fishermen affected live in New Orleans East, in the communiti…
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…ks that Occupy Faith has set itself are: to ally with unions and others to promote fair wages for all, especially low-wage workers to work for fair tax policy to join coalitions supporting constitutional change to get money out of politics and limit the power of corporations to participate in events and initiatives organized to promote justice and fairness to take nonviolent, direct action to the streets and halls of corporate and government p…
Read More…terview with Klein, a self-styled terrorism expert and former Marine Corps Vietnam vet, mentions his ties to the Copt diaspora community. Klein’s author biography in a self-published work, “Is Islam compatible with democracy,” states: “With 9/11 2001, I immersed myself with Islam in America; went to every major Mosque in SoCal with Arabic speaking Christians as translators and uncovered useful information about many Mosques being the head quarters…
Read More…types call a “non-traditional student,” an older, grizzled, white-bearded Vietnam veteran in a wheelchair (I later learned his amputations came after a round of neglected diabetes, not enemy bombs). On that first day he asked me if I had ever heard of a religious movement known as “Christian Identity.” I scanned my Wikipedia-like mental database and realized that, yes, I did know that particular sect. “It’s a white supremacist group, if I remembe…
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…uther King, Jr. make the argument against Vietnam, drafting King’s “Beyond Vietnam”speech in 1967, broadening the concern of the movement and alienating some moderate civil rights supporters. Author of numerous works on American-American religious history, including There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America and Martin Luther King: An Inconvenient Hero, Harding taught at Illiff School of Theology in Denver, Colo. for more than 20…
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