Religion Dispatches
…. These presuppositions were deepened and strengthened by the events of the 1770s and 1780s, in which the notion of an American Israel throwing off oppression in order to take up its national mission settled ever more deeply into American public rhetoric. This link was only strengthened by the Revolutionary experience, the great evangelical revivals of the early nineteenth century, and the nation’s first movements westward. Nor did the jeremiad go…
Read More
…, pointed to a union of desire and the divine. No other artist tapped into spiritual truth and multiple orgasms at the same time the way Prince did. He didn’t even have to say the words—his moans said everything. Listening to Prince made you all hot, bothered, and anxious. Especially anxious. That anxiety wasn’t only about lust, but about the intensity and romance of many of Prince’s lyrics. Prince seemed to be looking for that perfect sexual part…
Read More
…t More Widely in al-Ghazali… Berman’s book begins with an epigraph from the 11th century Iraqi doyen of religious sciences, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, arguably the most prominent premodern Muslim intellectual. Evoking the human search for the divine as “the quest for man’s chiefest bliss,” the quote sets the stage for his blistering, unrelenting excoriation of Tariq Ramadan which, as an earlier Times review put it, is “essentially a booklong polemic ag…
Read More
…assure voters put off by the draconian policies the GOP calls “pro-life.” A 19th century law and 1950s century gender roles Later on, Katy Talento, a health advisor in the Trump White House who says abortion is “disgusting, it’s against every woman’s desire,” echoed a Project 2025 plan to use the Comstock Act, an obscure 19th century law which bans the sending of “obscene materials” via the post office to ban abortion nationwide. “It’s not hard to…
Read More…ring who it is being directed to and where it is apparently originating. A number of Palestinians are Christians, and that Christianity is of course traced back to the time of Jesus himself. The Palestinian weekend is Friday and Sunday. In addition to being the world’s most annoying and dissatisfying weekend schedule (there should be an award for that, or maybe financial compensation), the days reflect the primary religious affiliations of Palesti…
Read More…y and the Gift of Gay.” “Flute Solo” had been in informal circulation since 1973 when it was written. Thus, he was 58 years old when he made public this affirmation of faith. On closer reading, I note that you had pegged this “coming out” at ninety. One might argue that this earlier date is the more profound since, although he was a mature monk and priest, he had many years to go in service to his vocation (37, to be precise). What I most apprecia…
Read More
…promulgation of Nostra Aetate (“Our Time”) by the Second Vatican Council in 1965 was spurred in large part by criticism of official Vatican neutrality during World War II. At the time, it was hailed as a forward-thinking document which attested to deep introspection on the part of the Church. Nostra Aetate forms the additional reason why Pope Francis’s comments were surprising to so many, from scholars to Catholic theologians to Jewish leaders. We…
Read More
…this arena where we can totally give ourselves to another person in body, spirit, and life and commitment and grow in that total gift of self which winds up being an image of Jesus’ total gift of himself for us. Critics say that marriage is more than that, though. What about procreation? The Bible consistently portrays procreation as a blessing from God and a gift, but there is no sense that it is essential for a marriage to be valid. Nowhere in…
Read More
…ious tradition which is shamanistic and animistic. In Hmong cosmology, the spiritual world and the material world are linked in complex ways, and the shaman works on behalf of the community to restore health, harmony, and to keep good relations with the ancestors (for an excellent documentary on a Hmong shaman from Appleton named Paja Thao see The Split Horn.) Hmong funerals, at which the entire community gathers to help the soul of the deceased p…
Read More…t we do to deliberate about such big problems. The line was offered in the spirit of can-do American industriousness, the notion that when we put our minds to a thing, we achieve it beyond the wildest expectations of a witnessing world. Such a line is neither Niebuhrian, nor necessarily very realistic. The vast majority of the President’s attention in this speech was focused on the economy, for obvious reasons. And he was trying to get back on mes…
Read More