Religion Dispatches
…rlas of the Pacifica Institute; Ibrahim Anli of the Journalists and Writers Foundation in Istanbul; Ardalan Jalal of Erbil’s Dialogue Middle East; and Hasan Yilmaz of the Diyarbakir Entrepreneurs and Businesspeople’s Association. …
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…y still doubles as his nickname: Jolly Good Fellow. Over the course of two phone conversations, RD asked Tan—who was, in fact, quite jolly—if mindfulness is a watering-down of Buddhism, whether meditation can truly save the world, and why he specializes in teaching rich people. You’re one of the only prominent advocates of secular mindfulness who is not white. What’s that like? Not only am I one of the only non-white people, but I’m one of the ver…
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…I write a weekly column and I get enormous mail and you can’t believe the number of mails I get from people living in little towns and there’s no church they can or want to go to so I am their church. I am the one point of contact outside of that community that makes them know they’re not crazy, because everybody else thinks they must be a Communist if they don’t go to church. I get letters from people who say they after they read one of my earli…
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…, “lament is the language of suffering.” Kendrick wants to “get God on the phone” but, just as in the Book of Lamentations, God remains silent. But that doesn’t stop Kendrick from baring his soul, Why you wanna see a good man with a broken heart? Once upon a time I used to go to church and talk to God Now I’m thinkin’ to myself, hollow tips is all I got There’s nothing quite as audacious as calling God a liar or suggesting that communing with this…
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I start my day like every Muslim does. By checking my phone. Breitbart, though, is hardly the first, second, or even third website I’ll check. Actually Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos’ “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the AltRight” might be the first Breitbart essay to have held my attention. But it did more than that. There’s always a few articles we come across, perhaps every month, that don’t just engage us, but force us to go bac…
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…all time and space? When the Cubit recently reached out to Dr. Reiss for a phone interview, though, his answers were surprising. We discussed his methodology, potential applications of his theory to secularism, and Reiss’s own spirituality as a scientist. How does your theory differ from those of past authors that posit just one or two motivations for religion? Ours is based on scientific research, so we ask people what motivates them. At this poi…
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…for shying away from hot-button religious culture war battles, “visited by phone” with Rowan County, Kentucky court clerk Kim Davis yesterday, according to a statement issued by his campaign. “I let her know how proud I am of her for not abandoning her religious convictions and standing strong for religious liberty,” the former pastor, Arkansas governor, and now two-time presidential candidate said in a statement. Arguing that “the Supreme Court c…
Read More…s right in front of us, difference is on our iPads, in our laptops, in our phones. We hold a whole world of difference every time we open a phone. And the response to in the world around is at best insult, and so often violence, a reality which is the living experience of many you here. Welby also addressed a January gathering of Primates, which voted to suspend the Episcopal Church from questions on doctrine or policy for three years because of i…
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…nder of the publishing house Shuddhashar. Shuddhashar, which began as a magazine, primarily produced books by young freethinkers; by late 2015, they had published roughly 1,000 books. “The slogan of my organization was ‘To Inspire,’” Tutul told me in an email. “Shuddhashar played an important role of trying to develop Bangladesh as a secular country culturally and socially.” Tutul had received death threats and informed the police of these threats…
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…l world have so many things that others don’t—refrigerators, televisions, iPhones—and that’s completely true, but what that misses is that those don’t provide meaning for you. Ironically, those things might communicate to people that the world is moving on without them. How does religion, as an “overarching system of meaning,” help the disenfranchised? I think that when somebody has a strong moral system of meaning, it’s easier to cope with setbac…
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