Religion Dispatches
…hy of international coverage because the Palestinian women had broken “the code of silence” by resorting to Israeli courts. The implications of this juxtaposition of two unrelated events are that Palestinians belong to a backward, patriarchal culture that, rightly or wrongly, is under attack by a modern, “democratic” state with a legal apparatus that supports women’s rights. Others have shown that the New York Times gave disproportionate attention…
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…tablishment was based on birth and breeding,” David Brooks explains, “this new establishment rests on education and career.” While the Upper East Side doyennes will still make an appearance, the overarching spirit of the pages is determinedly representative. Same-sex couples and mixed-race couples, old money couples and new money couples, couples who like tennis and couples who like cooking classes—everyone is there. The reader then becomes convin…
Read More…, over the years I have logged in many an hour listening like some wartime code breaker to folks like James Dobson, Chuck Colson, etc. For years, I was a near fanatical listener to Hank “The Bible Answer Man” Hanegraaff of the Christian Research Institute, tuning in like clockwork to his show weekdays 7:00-8:00 p.m. on Washington DC’s WAVA 105.1. Still, as much as I appreciated (and occasionally even found inspiring) these programs’ message of sel…
Read More…tmont College in Santa Barbara recently wrote an open letter to the school newspaper describing the “doubt, loneliness, and fear” they felt while attending the school. One hundred fellow alums signed on. Instead of circling the wagons and strenuously defending the “homosexual practice” forbidden in its code of ethics, the school is reaching out. 51 of the school’s 92 faculty members responded, seeking “forgiveness for ways we might have added to y…
Read More…never be discovered embezzling money, enjoying kinky sex, or (The Da Vinci Code notwithstanding) fathering surprise children. It’s not necessary to label something a “cult” to understand the potential peril involved in looking to a living guru. However honest and virtuous that guru might be, she—like the rest of us—is susceptible to tripping and falling right up until the day she dies. What makes some folks willing and able to trust in a charismat…
Read More…ligious freedom. In the terms of section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, these corporations are called “churches,” their “integrated auxiliaries,” and “conventions or associations of churches,” where churches are defined as a “subset of IRC 501(c)(3) organizations organized and operated for religious purposes.” Necessarily, such entities are artificial or fictive persons under the law, subjects capable of claiming rights and bearing respon…
Read More…o get confronted with this kind of crap? Hold firm to the faith and tell them that if they don’t like social or economic justice, they shouldn’t just find a new parish, they should get a new religion. Objectivism would be the name of that idol….
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…at the song is saying. Small wonder that the band’s raucous, hand-clapping new single (and another highlight of its Bonnaroo performance) bears the title “Gobbledigook.” Since its release, dedicated followers of Sigur Rós have been filling Internet discussion boards trying to parse the song’s lyrics. They may be missing the point. Sigur Rós seems to realize that what gives music and musical performance its power is something untranslatable, someth…
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…on–are reminiscent of the Nazi assaults on the German trans community. The new playbooks also use the same narratives the Christian Right used on gay people in the past, the same made-up logic about transness or gayness as a “social contagion.” Because gay or trans people can’t reproduce, their lie goes, they have to “indoctrinate” children with their “perversion.” Framing a marginalized group as predators accomplishes two things: it demonizes the…
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…—often more adroitly than their modern counterparts. In his Mishneh Torah (Code of Law), Maimonides explicitly advocated the position that women should stay mostly in their homes. The kabbalistic literature now so popular in modern Israel is in many ways worse. We have evidence that in the heyday of Safed in the sixteenth century a “council for rectifying sins” (va’ad le tikun avonot) was established to seek out and corporally punish those who wer…
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