Religion Dispatches
…olitics within a week or so of the attacks. I went well ahead of the start time, but by the time I got down to campus, the doors were already closed. They’d gotten far more attendees than they could fit. Hundreds of disappointed New Yorkers milled about on Washington Place, with nowhere to turn for answers. My great regret, down to today, was that I didn’t climb on one of the concrete planters lining the street, and tell everyone who I was, offeri…
Read More…“people really began to take notice” of his blog, and it soon became RNS’ “number one traffic generator,” and remained so for the duration of Merritt’s time writing at the site. Problems began to arise in 2017, still during Socolovsky’s tenure as editor, when Merritt began to notice missing payments. Earlier this year, Merritt asked to talk to Gallagher, who told him that he was out of contract and would need to be issued a new one. But Merritt be…
Read More
…to “regenerate” into a new body whenever he dies. He’s met his demise ten times now, each time emerging with a new face and new personality. The first three episodes of the current season use that regeneration as the jumping-off point for a sort of trilogy exploring the show’s interlocking themes of identity, morality, and integrity. As years pass and more actors step into the role, it becomes increasingly important for each performer to disting…
Read More…for Democracy. Israel: Fashion designer marries during NY Fashion Week The Times of Israel reported on the New York wedding of Israeli fashion designer Idan Cohen to his partner Elad Borenstein during New York Fashion Week. “Homosexuals cannot legally marry their same-sex partners in Israel,” notes the Times. “Civil marriage does not exist in the country, where the solemnization of marriage is entirely controlled by the state rabbinate, and homose…
Read More
…Physicsworld.com user asks, “What could be more mystical than an imaginary number interacting with real numbers to produce nothing?” Where infinity merges with the earth When you dig into pi, you encounter questions that are as much theological as mathematical: is there a pattern to the universe? Or is it fundamentally random? And how do we reckon with the infinite? Some people have always insisted that there must be a pattern behind pi. If only h…
Read More
…grants from their homes. They are pulled to the U.S. because of demand for cheap labor. One of the major pushes came in the ’90s with the passage of NAFTA, which opened the door to many agri-businesses to move farms down to Mexico, putting small farmers out of business. And while the number of undocumented border crossers is down, Brother David says, it will be virtually impossible to eliminate them as long as the opportunities for jobs exist. As…
Read More
…then it has to begin by tackling the question of land. Swampy, virgin, and cheap Canadians who tell stories about land in a public setting can no longer do so while ignoring that they (we) are treaty people—that Canadians live in nation-to-nation relations with Indigenous peoples. As treaty people, part of the responsibility of settlers is to know and tell stories that acknowledge Indigenous land is the very same territory that they also call home…
Read More
…highly sanitized and selective narrative about the past. But another, sometimes overlooked, function of Confederate monuments was the way they served the cause of “healing.” That is, Confederate monuments stood as trophies of a cheap reconciliation where white people of “both sides” of the war could celebrate each other’s mutual valor. Perhaps they would never agree on who was in the wrong, but for the good of the nation, (white) Americans should…
Read More
…of the lead pieces in the new installment of “The America We Need” in the Times mentions race as the primary driver of this ugly aspect of American exceptionalism. This piece by senior editor Kevin Delaney is typical: he mentions how those clinging to the bottom rungs of the economy are disproportionately Black and brown, but that’s all. Perplexing that the Times could blunder badly here, given the overall wokeness of its “1619 Project.”] The rut…
Read More…hey don’t have it as bad as gays in ISIS-held territory. So let’s put that cheap argument to bed. At Patheos, Benjamin Corey shakes that cheap argument awake: Can we stop complaining about this bogus idea that American Christians are persecuted now? I mean, really. Can we stop? The world needs us to turn from ourselves and focus on this real persecution, because it’s evil and must be exposed and stopped. However, our own self-centeredness as Ameri…
Read More