Religion Dispatches
…reotypes. Finally, Obama is grievously out of line for violating the tacit code of silence that plagues our country on issues of race, racism, and slavery. Many believe that it is politically incorrect to talk publicly about America’s perennial sins (both past and present) or to speak of America as anything but “the promised land,” or the fabled “City upon a Hill.” This includes bringing up any of America’s contradictions, such as the construction…
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…etter-balanced understanding of the impact of religion on American society today.” But equating “the production of economic value” with “positive impact on society” seems disingenuous. And that apparent desire to overcorrect may have led to the study’s biggest problem. Other than a brief mention in their introduction and conclusion, the study doesn’t consider ways in which religion might detract from economic production. Devoting a half dozen sent…
Read More…ion and, intriguingly, that he “adds to that diversity,” which is probably code for a less-than-orthodox approach to the faith. Huntsman is helped also by the fact that whereas Mormonism may be the most intriguing thing about candidate Romney, candidate Huntsman plays rock-and-roll and rides motorcycles. 3. He needs to show well in New Hampshire, but it’s South Carolina he is banking on. His campaign team is already heavy with recycled McCain pers…
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…ot to pay for your bags of fudge rounds It’s hard not to read “welfare” as code. Welfare has long been used in conservative circles as a dog whistle for Black people, immigrants, and others who are supposedly too lazy to work and thus draining the life from our society. The idea of the “welfare queen,” a single Black urban mother, was introduced by Ronald Reagan in 1976: “At a campaign rally in 1976, Ronald Reagan introduced the welfare queen into…
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…to resistance within the family structure that allowed for them to be here today. That’s a really important component of this project. People are desiring to heal, but they’re also desiring to affirm the power of resistance to social forces. It seems a lot of black women who came to this exhibit saw it as a sacred space and described it as similar to going to church. How does this space stand as an alternative to spaces like the black church where…
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…than thinking about the self as being a language—as being like a computer code that speaks—we think about the self as a cluster of forces. [These forces] make us what we are, and our decisions come from that rather than from this linguistic layer, which is actually constituted by that more fundamental cluster of forces. That’s what I see affect theory doing: upsetting this idea that human beings start with language and that we do what we do becau…
Read More…Christians is not reason enough for a divorce and, more often than not, is code for “serious sin.” Pentecostals have a history of being strict about reasons to divorce, adultery being scripturally the only reason to do so. For those who divorce and who have a denominational affiliation through ministerial license, a divorce can mean, at best, additional scrutiny and at worst, stripping of ministerial credentials. Of course, that never has stopped…
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…luding those below the poverty line, federal employees, those cared for by Indian Health Service and Peace Corps volunteers—who fall into the canyons created by sweeping bans on federal funding for abortion. Caitlin Borgmann, a CUNY law professor and board member of the National Abortion Federation, wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times this August when the paper ran a story on the challenges facing American servicewomen that omitted…
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…nd active commitment to “social justice,” something that Beck has said are code words for Communism and Nazism. Look, Frank Capra wasn’t exactly known for his subtle messages. Yet, somehow, Beck manages to reinterpret the movie through an unregulated free-market ideological Ayn Rand prism and message of Christian conservatism. For real? Either Beck has never watched the movie, or he’s so conservatively deluded that he thinks Mr. Potter is the hero…
Read More…other religious faiths, too.” (Like the Prime Minister using his office to promote his Christian faith.) But then Cameron reveals his politician’s circumspection, arguing on the one hand that advocates of “secular neutrality fail to grasp the consequences of that neutrality, or the role that faith can play in helping people to have a moral code.” That accusation is abruptly followed by the disclaimer that “[o]f course, faith is neither necessary n…
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