Religion Dispatches
…dard magazine. Their entertaining, short posts and longer features use the latest research to examine conventional wisdom and to propose new ways of thinking about old or intractable problems… among other things. But, as one who’s often skeptical of the conclusions drawn from social science research—if not of the methodologies behind the research itself—I’m particularly disappointed to see misleading conclusions drawn from a PS post. I’ll explai…
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…r low-income Americans and for increased taxes on the wealthy are just the latest iteration of conservatives galvanized by FDR’s New Deal. And like older generations, many of today’s activists are as much motivated by religion as by politics and economics. Between 1933 and 1936, Roosevelt initiated a series of laws and executive orders to help Americans crushed by the Great Depression. Bereft of jobs, savings and security, millions willingly accep…
Read More…h threats and required a police escort to attend classes. Judging from the latest round of tweets on her Twitter feed, the hatred has yet to subside. It started when Ahlquist posted this tweet: @jessicaahlquist: Cranston West put in new (secular) murals and had an invite-only unveiling and I wasn’t invited </3 (9/22/13) Most of those tweeting at @jessicaahlquist seem to be card carrying Christians. @RichardReed84: of course you weren’t invite…
Read More…ing religion when discussing Apple and Jobs. O’Brien is just reviewing the latest, most scholarly contribution to this trend, Brett Robinson’s new book Appletopia: Media Technology and the Religious Imagination of Steve Jobs. In O’Brien’s description, Appletopia “examines the way that Steve Jobs drew on religious metaphors and iconography to elevate his products specifically, and technology more generally, into a kind of religion.” I haven’t yet s…
Read MoreThe Westboro Baptist Church’s latest hijinks took them to Lincoln, Nebraska this past Sunday to protest Ke$ha’s Warrior Tour and to “[pray] for the curses of baldness, burning & stink” to fall upon the pop star (and ordained minister) who’s made no secret of being bisexual, in favor of same sex marriage, and “a huge fan of the transgender community.” But as the WBC belted out its parody of Kesha’s gay anthem “We R Who We R,” a trio of her backup…
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…ayful review here on RD, Andrew Aghapour writes that Patricia Churchland’s latest book essentially asks two questions, each of which poses a challenge to nearly all of the world’s belief systems: “Could the new sciences of the brain be so powerful that we needn’t go looking elsewhere for insights into the human condition? Does the brain encompass an individual in totality, leaving no room for a transcendent soul?” Noting that the human brain coul…
Read More…hem or that they can be miraculously healed by touching the garment of the latest faith healer and saying “Baaay-bee!” Religion can also motivate people to kill others like abortion doctors, gays and lesbians, and transgender people all in the name of their god. The single greatest motivator for these 98 subjects however most certainly was a fear-based one. In short, they were all living under the threat of hell. The thought of eternal damnation—…
Read More…_ At the beginning of “The Time of Angels,” the first half of Doctor Who’s latest two-parter, the Doctor and Amy have found themselves in the 51st century, assisting a military mission to recover a crashed ship’s cargo. We meet a military commander who identifies himself as “Father Octavian—Bishop Second Class, 20 clerics at my command.” Clearly there is some interesting church history in the thirty centuries between that future and our present, b…
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…ific concern. Camping has been buried by subsequent news cycles and is the latest member of a cadre of religious leaders whom the Apocalypse passed by. But while May’s Apocalypse seems to have skipped over most of the world, it did land squarely on a hilltop in north-western Vietnam. It would behoove us to take notice of the complex and unexpected ways in which this spring’s apocalypticism rippled across the world—in short radio waves, to be preci…
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…m our historical experience, and from the ‘ethos’ of self-righteousness as promoted by Prime Minister Begin. In my opinion, there is no greater threat to our survival than this ethos of self-righteousness. It renders us blind and unable to understand our situation—and it gives legitimacy to bad national leadership. Both Harkabi and Leibowitz died in 1994. Toward the ends of their lives, each spoke in prophetic terms about Israel’s political-milita…
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