Religion Dispatches
…flexibility of access, opportunities for sharing and collaboration, and almo*]}*st endless options for creative customization extends across generations. This in itself offers a never been before seen level of authority to youth in particular, especially with regard to sacred resources. So, it is not digital tools and toys at the center of cultural change to which religious leaders are attempting to respond, but the nature of spiritual authority itse…
Read MoreNew polling data released by Republicans For Choice suggests that most self-identified Republicans are actually in favor of abortion rights. The omnibus poll was conducted by TNS, an independent research firm which conducts weekly phone polls, according to a Republicans for Choice press release. The poll asked, regardless of respondents’ personal feelings about abortion, whether “the woman, family, and her doctor [should] make the decision or th…
Read More…although I suspect it will serve as a balance to what has passed, and what most likely will come of my future writing on the subject. It is apparent that there has been a pile-on in the media about the Catholic Church, much of it deserved, some petty, and some just plain old wrong. But it’s hard not to take on the church when its response to the growing scandal is termed as gossip, not once, but twice, and the criticism of the Pope or the church c…
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…porary X on the skin using a device called a Tesla coil during a science demonstration. He says he had done that, with no complaints, hundreds of times in his 21 years as a teacher at Mount Vernon Middle School. Daubenmire said that Freshwater had admitted using the Tesla coil on Zachary Dennis, as he has done to students for 20 years, but he denies that he burned him. “There is no proof that is his arm in the photo,” he said. However, during the…
Read More…do I emerge Exceptional Academic, rippling with cerebral muscles. I go in Struggling Momma, and I emerge Dr. Barely There. Cafés help me transition from one mode to the next. In my study, surrounded by onesies and jangly toys, I can’t really transition, and I end up blogging about the challenges of motherhood. So, one day, I left my toddler in her father’s care, and went to a café. I like my baristas. I enjoy making conversation with them about p…
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…ted from “the dross of his biographers” in order to better understand “the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man.” The resulting book became known as the Jefferson Bible. The long, strange history of the object is now the subject of a new book by Peter Manseau, The Jefferson Bible: A Biography. Peter Manseau is the Curator of American Religious History at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History…
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…es move. This disconnect may explain why we so often fail to carry out our most adamant decisions. This morning, I vowed to write all afternoon rather than watch football, but somehow I ended up watching the end of the Jets game. These experiences recall Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Imp of the Perverse,” about a man who feels possessed by an evil other. Brain disorders can trigger much more dramatic experiences of this kind. Schizophrenics p…
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…r in the study of radically different beliefs that it is, by this point, almo*]}*st hackneyed. In repeating commonplace metaphors of conspiracy theories as brainwashing, something that, “took her mind,” as Cook writes of one QAnon adherent, little is added to help understand the particularity of conspiracy theories. Why, when there are two sisters raised together in the same social and material conditions, does one accept QAnon and the other does not?…
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…longer than anywhere else on earth. The people of Hopkinsville are for the most part happily bracing for the event. Hopkinsville leaders have dubbed their town “Eclipseville” and are expecting tens of thousands of visitors to crowd their hotels and restaurants. They say Hopkinsville is big enough “to make your solar eclipse experience memorable” but also “small enough to make sure you feel at home.” In addition to encouraging visitors to sample th…
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…e lovely side note in Geoghegan’s account is the way in which he makes a famous movie villain—Lionel Barrymore’s Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life—look positively angelic in relation to today’s big boys at Citi and Chase and Bank of America. At least Mr. Potter wanted his loans to be repaid. But in the new lending environment where there’s no limit on interest, today’s bankers would actually rather that borrowers don’t pay. They can collect fa…
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