Religion Dispatches
…loc, no injuries.] A tweet from Daniel Seidemann, founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem: By the way: this Zionist, and Israeli patriot says now: missiles near Jerusalem does not make the Palestinian suffering in Gaza justifiable — Daniel Seidemann (@DanielSeidemann) November 16, 2012 More political reading: Matt Duss at The American Prospect on why the military attack on Gaza was a gamble for Israel, and one that won’t solve the problem it purports to…
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…tion of US religious in 1983, though the outcome of that process was less brutal than the current one has proven to be. In point of fact, throughout the history of the Church, bishops and popes have struggled mightily to keep committed celibate Catholic women under control. Already in the early Christian centuries male church leaders forced virgins to describe themselves as “brides of Christ” rather than use the male martial imagery they had come…
Read More…anking LDS Church leaders on the defensive on camera. Last weekend, at the worldwide LDS Semi-Annual General Conference, it was Church leaders’ turn to broadcast their own messages about Mormonism, preaching the importance of Christian service, forgiveness, and obedience, and offering spiritual encouragement to families caring for children with disabilities. Which image is correct? The sharp split between two reflects a persistent divide in repres…
Read More…d interest in the caucuses among young people is “pretty low.” While it’s true that on social conservative issues Iowa can be a “polarized place,” small-town good manners rule everywhere except for caucus-related settings. “People know who they can talk to, but they don’t engage with people outside, because that would be considered impolite.” As for anti-Mormonism, Beckstrom says, “I thought it would be more of an issue.” Rival candidates like Ric…
Read More…documents to the public. The documents cover the period of Pope Pius XII’s World War II papacy and the trial of Galileo. Speaking of Pius XII, a woman has claimed he miraculously cured her lymphoma, encouraging those in favor of the controversial Pope’s sainthood. Shepard’s prayer, “Dear Lord, please don’t let me f-up,” was possibly the first to be uttered in space. Is space travel a spiritual experience, then? The Church of England has temporaril…
Read More…I adore these guys. Athens-based Packway Handle Band performing an old traditional aired on a BBC travel documentary about American folk music….
Read More…much of what follows hinges on it, so I’ve got to. The Pandorica was constructed to contain a “nameless, terrible thing,” “the most feared being in all the cosmos”—but those words describe the Doctor himself perfectly, don’t they? To his enemies, the Doctor is the most feared being in the cosmos, and they’ve teamed up to do something about it, devising the Pandorica as an elaborate trap for the time-traveling do-gooder. The Doctor—in this incarna…
Read More…e political dimensions of religion as being conservative, and that’s been true in America over the last 20-30 years, but that’s not been true in America historically….Progressives at their peril ignore the power of religious rhetoric and religious organization and religious motivation for making social change. Nor does disaffiliation mean, as is sometimes argued, that conservative Christians are winning the hearts and souls of the church over more…
Read More…is the product of a political movement labelled “Islamism” that seeks “the rule of Islamic law” is not merely the subject of a single film, but is a central, orienting message of the museum. The thirteenth word of a summary paragraph as one walks into the first hallway is “Islamist,” a term of art that is not necessarily defined in the same manner by the general public as by scholars. Recklessly, no definition is even hinted at until hours later o…
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…clerics at the highest levels of the Church, Evil presents a more mundane world of parish priests whose struggles mirror those of ordinary working people—too much to do, office politics, and lots of loneliness. Acosta’s mentor grumbles that he has three exorcisms scheduled in the next two weeks; while a priest who may have played a role in a miracle hits the bottle and complains that God is “the quietest roommate I’ve ever had.” Non-Catholic char…
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