Religion Dispatches
…liberal perspective is illegitimate; that it is wrong and dangerous and un-American and evil. More to the point, they have been told that liberals are not needed. They have been told that the nation would be better off without anyone to the left of Ronald Reagan; that an America with a particular construct of traditional social mores, an adventurous military, and an unfettered corporate capitalism could keep them safe and happy. Liberals, the stor…
Read More…ere white athletes enjoy more protection than their Polynesian and African-American peers. Yes, it is a story that calls up Mormonism’s troubled history on African-American issues. (And Smith, surprisingly, gets some of that history wrong: for example, some African-American men were ordained to the Mormon priesthood until the latter part of the nineteenth century, when regressive racially discriminatory policies were instituted.) And it is a story…
Read More…and theological subterfuge. The group is a strategic reincarnation of the American Anglican Council of Washington, a chapter of the American Anglican Council (AAC), the national body created in 1996 to oversee congregations that split with the Episcopal Church. As an organization independent of the Episcopal church, the AAC and its affiliates would have not have standing in the church to bring disciplinary charges. Trustees of the AFF have been a…
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Sharon Slater, American anti-gay activist and president of Family Watch International, recently encouraged delegates attending a law conference in Lagos, Nigeria to resist the United Nations’ calls to decriminalize homosexuality. Keynoting the Nigerian Bar Association Conference, Slater told delegates that they would lose their religious and parental rights if they supported “fictitious sexual rights.” One such “fictitious right” is the right to…
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…ly white set of practitioners, even though they are probably a minority of American practitioners. “So much of the Asian diasporic and Asian-American face of Buddhism has been erased and dismissed from the mainstream versions of the dharma in the U.S.,” said the BPF’s Katie Loncke. The outsized visibility of white celebrities and CEOs practicing mindfulness highlights the longstanding tension between the immigrant Asian Buddhist community and the…
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…t trafficked in well-meaning revisionist history can tell us nothing about American Jewish culture in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Yet the story of how “Oyfn Pripetshik” came to be sung in Walnut Grove may tell us something about the enduring place of Jewish languages in American culture today. “The Craftsman” was the first television job for a young writer named Paul Wolff, now a professor of screenwriting at the University of Sout…
Read More…support for LGBTQ members. Moreover, the decentralized nature of the Hindu American landscape has made it more difficult for efforts to be noted or noticed. The Hindu American Foundation has for years supported same-sex marriage, and has argued that LGBT equality is scripturally sanctioned. Hindu chaplains at universities like Princeton, Yale, and Georgetown, for example, have made LGBTQIA counseling and outreach a priority in their efforts. Hindu…
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…er for the first time Saturday, The Daily Show‘s “first-generation, Indian-American Muslim kid,” Hasan Minhaj, was in rare form, subjecting the D.C. press corps and the absent Trump administration to the biting, funny-because-its-true humor laced with socio-political critique that’s made him a standout senior correspondent on The Daily Show. The full 25-minute speech is worth watching (see video at the bottom of this post), but for those short on…
Read More…iness. So, Roman Catholics leave the Baby Jesus out of the manger, whereas American Protestants seem especially obsessed with that symbol of primal innocence. And American Protestants leave the Crucified Christ off of the Cross, which must mean something too… Consider what constituted the real heart of the religious reforms central to the Protestant Reformation. No holy water, no incense, no painting, no statues, no saints, no relics, no monasteri…
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…ut all of capitalism. There’s no question that Christian ideas have shaped American business practices, just as American business practices have influenced churches. Lumping the annual revenues of Walmart in with synagogue dues, donations to the Salvation Army, and Catholic hospitals seems like a stretch. And if you look at other corporations, and the criteria used to include them, the territory becomes even murkier. Take Trijicon, for example, ch…
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