Religion Dispatches
…lly, the title I suggested was Fear for Your Life: Evolution and Modern American Horror. A friend of mine came up with that and I liked the pun in the first part of the title, but the press, Oxford UP, wanted something more snappy, and so they suggested Why Horror Seduces. They had the right idea. It is snappy. I like it. How do you feel about the cover? I love the cover. I took that picture myself (with my cell phone), and the press did a great j…
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…l attention to her. During the past year I have also had an unusually high number of encounters with different physicians attached to my health maintenance organization in Los Angeles. These combined experiences prompt me to consider what ails the practice of medicine these days. And if I may be allowed to state my diagnosis right up front: the problem is time. Doctors aren’t spending nearly enough time listening to and getting to know their patie…
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…to have to staff that administration. And in particular if you remove thousands, if not tens of thousands of career civil servants, somebody needs to fill those positions. And I think the first Trump administration did show pretty persuasively that a career national security official, a career neoconservative is not going to be as reliable in implementing, you know, Trump’s agenda either domestically or in foreign policy. And, you know, the Nazis…
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…h, and is freed by it. Boyanov is wealthy, and can afford to be herself. Susan’s and Rayna’s budding loyalty to each other comes worryingly, treasonously close to overruling our patriotic certainties, our geographic support network. In an America that is permanently at war, and yet banishes that war to robots and surveillance and conversations we’d rather not (and so don’t) have, is it any wonder we can imagine CIA agents being just like us? The q…
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…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. But even though the President-elect was relatively quiet on LGBT…
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…aven” flag, originally from the Revolutionary War era, is no ordinary historical flag. It’s been claimed by the most extreme right-wing Christian nationalists of the New Apostolic Reformation. They write: [It was] adopted by Dutch Sheets, a Wagner disciple and a famous apostle in his own right, in 2013. Sheets claimed that this Colonial American military flag was a prophetic symbol of the Third Great Awakening that would arrive as soon as Christia…
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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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…eme Court decisions in New York and California. In those cases, the courts sanctioned exemptions only for entities that were directly involved in the inculcation of religion and that primary employ and serve people of their own faith—who presumably share their religious beliefs. Nonetheless, spooked by the specter of a Catholic electoral backlash and Dolan’s foot-stomping at the White House, the Obama administration backed down and gave church-adj…
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…s know, all too well, that it is “terrorism” when the victims are white Americans—otherwise it’s simply a “hate crime.” But, then again, it can only be a hate crime if the perpetrators are white Americans, otherwise it’s “terrorism.”) Somehow the story is more easily told when we don’t have to talk about race—because no one knows how to talk about when people of color attack other people of color. But when reports refer to an attack on a “gay nigh…
Read More…ur beliefs, to take key positions in education, business, government, and the media around the world,” the statement read. The group pledged not to be cowed by critics that “believe homosexuality is normal and useful, especially journalists in Europe and America, many of whom are themselves homosexual or their active supporters.” Well. Yes. Journalists are clearly all homosexuals. In any case, Scott Lively is intent on global reach, and is traveli…
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