Religion Dispatches
…adjustments in which the document or development in question is merely the latest, could be forgiven for reading them cynically. Regulations can seem opposed to the human need they ought to be addressing. The boundary that defines a practice can easily be interpreted as a mere exclusion and not an attempt, however unnervingly precise, to preserve something good and essential within it. But if our preconceptions as readers (and writers) of religion…
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…for publication by Ballantine Books. The novel is now at the center of the latest round of controversy about fictionalizing the history of Islam and the lives of Muhammad and his relatives. Media reaction was minimal until the Wall Street Journal picked up the story under the head, “You Still Can’t Write About Muhammad.” The refusal of the publisher to go ahead with the publication of the book, which also involved a contract for a second book, has…
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In this latest addition to It’s Your Fault, The Cubit’s series on blame in contemporary society, RD senior correspondent Haroon Moghul offers some good things to blame all Muslims for. The illustrations for this article come from the Illustration Class for high schoolers taught by Julie Zhu at the Sitka Fine Arts Camp, a nationally recognized fine arts camp in Sitka, Alaska. The opportunity allowed students a peek inside professional illustration…
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…devil? Or when Sephardic Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Ovadia Yosef blamed Israel’s latest bout of wildfires on secular Israelis not keeping the Sabbath? Or how about the time some Christian fundamentalists said that he 2005 tsunami in Indonesia was punishment for, in the words of one, “worldliness, materialism, hedonism, uncleanness and pleasure-seeking”? Where are these self-proclaimed prophets of Godly vengeance now? Do storms only evince heavenly displ…
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…ce’s decision to shut Gaffney out, there is still a screening of Clarion’s latest endeavor, Iranium, at this week’s conference. Jasser also will be a star witness at Republican Peter King’s “radical Islam” hearings. Ali Gharib reports in AlterNet on an earlier screening of Iranium, which hypes Tehran’s nuclear threat, at the Heritage Foundation, and about how the film being promoted by a former colleague of World Net Daily’s Aaron Klein, who was o…
Read MoreOn the latest episode of my show on Bloggingheads, World magazine political reporter Emily Belz and I discuss the ongoing battle over contraception coverage and the Rick Santorum surge. Was Darrell Issa’s hearing last week a political winner or loser? For religious conservatives, this battle is not about 2012, but a long game, as mapped out in the Manhattan Declaration. In this clip, Belz and I discuss the religious language Santorum uses, and wh…
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…sentation? Why do 53% of white men still side with Trump, according to the latest Pew Research poll? And if white supremacy isn’t a real thing, why is the decennial census, upon which both Congressional representation and huge amounts of federal funding hinge, being openly sabotaged by Trump flunkies? Why has immigration basically been shut down? Why is the postal service being gutted when mail-in ballots will likely determine the election? Why is…
Read More…ct the spurious claim to Biblical inerrancy when it suits them, as in this latest instance and with regard to divorce, shellfish, and tattoos, yet when it comes to same-sex marriage the Bible’s inerrancy appears to once again be in effect. Times have changed and they continue to change—what was once acceptable, is now recognized as unjust and wrong, and using the Bible to argue that means that the Bible is not an inerrant, inflexible document but…
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…des, moral reform movements, and generations of political activism. In his latest book, Matthew Avery Sutton, a professor of history at Washington State University, traces this history of American evangelical apocalypticism from the end of the 19th century to the present day. In the process, he proposes a revised understanding of American evangelicalism, focused on the urgent expectations of the end of human history. If you want to understand mode…
Read More…n the tone set by Pope Francis and some of the U.S. bishops continues. The latest example comes from Bishop Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, who greeted yesterday’s arrival of marriage equality in that state with an exorcism service. Paprocki said, “God is asking me to speak out and give these prayers.” From the report in the Chicago Sun-Times: “I exorcise you, every unclean spirit, every power of darkness, every incursion of the infernal enemy…
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