Religion Dispatches
…, “lament is the language of suffering.” Kendrick wants to “get God on the phone” but, just as in the Book of Lamentations, God remains silent. But that doesn’t stop Kendrick from baring his soul, Why you wanna see a good man with a broken heart? Once upon a time I used to go to church and talk to God Now I’m thinkin’ to myself, hollow tips is all I got There’s nothing quite as audacious as calling God a liar or suggesting that communing with this…
Read More…tions of the president. Last year, he came under fire for meeting with the American Bible Society president “to begin a dialogue on the importance of the Bible in the founding of the country.” In 2010, the White House refused to comment on DuBois’ phone call to religious right ideologue David Jeremiah after the latter called the president “a dangerous person” moving the country toward “socialism.” It was obviously an incident the White House would…
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…ump hurled insults at groups which, combined, represent a vast majority of Americans. He insulted women, Muslims, Mexicans and Latinos, African-Americans, people of color, members of the press, people with disabilities, and career politicians whom he denounced as “crooked.” That means it’s not at all hyperbolic to issue a warning call to each of those groups who will, in all likelihood, have their freedom targeted by the incoming administration. B…
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…m. It was the perfect target. A small Jewish cultural center staffed by an American-Israeli Rabbi and his wife, both of whom were killed, was also singled out. This indicates a transnational orientation. Mumbai does have a small Jewish community, but the center served a Jewish tourist community. It was a symbolic target because in South Asia and elsewhere in the Muslim world, “Jews” and the religion of Judaism are routinely implicated in complex,…
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…sformation” of the Catholic Church that is under way, “a decisive shift in numbers towards the Global South—to Asia, Africa and Latin America.” A century ago, he says, two-thirds of the world’s Catholics were in Europe, but by the middle of this century that number will fall “to perhaps a sixth.” Geography is not destiny, but it is only natural that prelates from one part of the world will tend to speak for the traditions with which they are most…
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…on the heels of the birth of my second grandson. One minute we were on the phone and I was describing the birth event and sharing photos on Facebook. The next day, she went to bed, coughed once, and then breathed no more. She was 44. I thought about her when I read in the Qur’an how “every soul will have its taste of death.” So gentle was her moment of passing, and yet so painful has been these few months without her here to enjoy this Ramadan to…
Read More…ol uniforms held their parents’ hands. A host of chatty young nuns tucked iPhones into the pockets of their steely gray habits. Absolutely no protest signs were allowed, yet church groups with people who spoke Spanish sported bright T-shirts with slogans about immigration reform. On line I heard that parishes with large numbers of undocumented immigrants had received many tickets. No outside food or water, statues, gifts or selfie sticks were perm…
Read More…a piece of paper on the dashboard of Roeder’s car: It contained the phone number of Cheryl Sullenger, Operation Rescue’s senior policy advisor, who served two years in prison for conspiring to bomb abortion clinics in 1988. Roeder also told me that Sullenger was present at the lunch with Newman where they discussed “justifiable” homicide, and that Newman had given Roeder the autographed copy of his book just three months before Roeder killed Till…
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…about the case over the years. “[…] Chen is not the kind of activist that American authorities would have wanted to help,” claimed Julio Severo a blogger for LifeSite, “Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are shamelessly pro-abortion, while Chen is pro-life.” Matthew Cullinan Hoffman alleged in a LifeSite op-ed that the Obama administration would rather see Chen disappear. Like many anti-abortion activists, Hoffman maintains that the Obama administr…
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…u stand, they’re right, or not.” Maybe it is time to get the muftis on the phone after all. In the United States, at least, religious leaders and politicians have deferred some of society’s most pressing ethical concerns to the wisdom of the market. Calls that the “end of history” lies with neoliberal capitalism are being heard as far as the People’s Republic of China. Not without reason, the 20th century’s question of why free markets has been re…
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