Religion Dispatches
You don’t go the NAACP Convention and say “Obamacare.” You just don’t. Because we all know that “Obamacare” is a fighting word straight from the lexicon of partisan ugly. If you want to describe the Affordable Healthcare Act as “Obamacare” in your own house, that’s your business. But when you get invited to the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, you don’t say “Obamacare” because you don’t use f…
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Sarah Palin’s baptism-by-waterboarding comment at the National Rifle Association this weekend has disgusted Christians across the spectrum, both for her blaspheming of a religious sacrament, and her cavalier dismissal of the inhumanity of torture. Ed Kilgore points us to Mollie Hemingway’s post on the matter, in which Hemingway notes: Now, it’s also true that Palin, from what we know of her congregational affiliations, is influenced by subsets of…
Read MoreLast week I spoke with Corey Robin, who teaches in the Brooklyn College political science department, about the department’s decision to co-sponsor a panel of speakers who are advocates for the controversial Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The event became embroiled in a high-profile dispute over academic freedom after local elected officials attempted to pressure the department to withdraw its co-sponsorship, and some even thr…
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…oring in what Jesus minored in.” I love that. I love that. That was really talking church talk… But these are exceptions. The thing is, it’s the megachurches—it’s the big sanctified churches, it’s the 20,000, 50,000 church congregations [that are anti-gay]. So I just don’t know. I think it’s only to the good, it’s only useful, Obama’s endorsement. But what sway it will have within these churches, I don’t know. I am much less encouraged than everyo…
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So here we go again—militants acting in the name of Islam go on a murderous rampage. They shout “God is great” and declare their fealty to the Prophet Muhammad while they kill and terrorize. Sickening déjà vu moments. For all those who want assurance that Islam is indeed on a collision course with the West (and vice versa), the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris served to do just that. Add to that the continuous carnage being wreaked by the so-call…
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…this nation over to those who believe we can negotiate with extremists and talk them into being “nice”? And can we avoid a showdown simply by packing up and running away? Diplomacy has its place, of course, but trying to negotiate with those who want to kill us is ridiculous. According to Dobson, foreign policy, like raising children, is about using discipline to establish authority. Just like dealing with a defiant child who acts like a “tyrant”…
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…coming from God, as what makes it enchanted or magical? If we’re going to talk about God the Creator, we should understand that we’re speaking metaphorically. Understanding Creation and Creator as both metaphor and symbol – it becomes so much richer when you engage with it that way. I think Christians have to be willing to engage creatively with their own theology – to understand that theology itself is a living, poetic experience. Theopoetics is…
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…_________ Clarkson: Religious political progressives (and not just clergy) talk a lot about speaking truth to power—but I notice that there is much less talk about having enough power to address the injustices of which they speak. Many are effective issue advocates, but draw the line at engaging in electoral politics. In that light, how do you see your own evolution from issue advocate to Christian minister to politician? Currie: There are differe…
Read MoreThe brawl between Governor Mitt Romney and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid—an open flouting of the fall-into-line conventions of Mormon masculinity—is taking center stage during these dog days of Campaign 2012, underscoring the generally cranky mood of this campaign (now dubbed Death Race 2012 by one media outlet) and disguising its real poverty: principled and productive dialogue on the fairly intractable economic transition our nation is now…
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In the American ritual calendar, two days celebrate those who’ve served in the armed forces. Memorial Day is poignant, set at the end of May in the context of life’s seasonal burgeoning—flowers, birdsong, sunshine, and backyard barbecues—but dedicated to the memory of those who’ve died in service to the nation. Veterans Day is the less mournful of the two. Known as Armistice Day in much of the world—as it was in America until 1954—it commemorates…
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