Religion Dispatches
…red, and Art declared its independence from Religion. This created a whole new way of seeing, a new and distinctively modern culture of display, and a subtly religious perspective where the line separating real bodies from visual imitations began to blur. We live in that world of hybrid forms still today. The body is a site of conflict as well as a source of uncanny cultural production. So the body parts of the paradigmatic “man of science” are…
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…erhood is the most visible sign of a possible role for religion in Egypt’s new political landscape. There are, however, several factions within the Brotherhood, and serious divisions on strategy. The old guard does not want to form a political party, for example, but the new Freedom and Justice Party is largely made up of independent Muslim Brotherhood members, and younger Brothers have sought to form other political parties. There is also an indi…
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…I believe this is the first time the brothers have dipped their toes into New Testament waters.” Indeed he is mistaken. The Coens love the New Testament as only secular Jews can. The first shot in Hail, Caesar!, of a wooden statue of Jesus above the altar of a Catholic Church recalls a similar shot near the beginning of The Man Who Wasn’t There, a movie about a man dying for the sins of others. And let us not forget that in Miller’s Crossing, Tom…
Read More…d others in protest of “the annual Iran-backed al-Quds Day rally.” From CIJNews, which calls itself a news source for the Canadian-Israeli community: Doc, a spokesman for Queers Against Islamic Apartheid, told CIJnews that he wants to see a boycott, divestment and sanction campaign against 52 Islamic countries, including OPEC nations, that engage in imprisonment, torture and murder of gay people. “We are a group of people made up of Kurds, Yezidis…
Read More…oes not presuppose or require agreement on gay marriage, but it does ask a new question. The current question is, Should gays marry? The new question is, Who among us, gay or straight, wants to strengthen marriage? Gays and lesbians have argued all along that their goal isn’t to destroy marriage, but to strengthen it—to rehab it from the ghetto Blankenhorn points out that it has become. Not everyone is convinced, of course, and while opponents usu…
Read More…eneral Conference Talk, these are incremental but significant changes. The new CHI: 1. Removes the implication that same-sex relationships “distort” love. 2. Removes the imperative that members should repent for having “homosexual thoughts or feelings.” 3. Removes the instruction that Church leaders should refer members to professional counseling. This is especially significant because in times past leaders were encouraged to refer members to prac…
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…out in San Francisco where wealthy and well-connected Catholics took out a newspaper ad calling for the replacement of Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone. His efforts to frontload a Catholic high school handbook with anti-gay rhetoric have punctuated his unpopular stint in San Francisco. The smart money is on him being promoted and relocated, as happened with Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law and other clerics who have contributed so actively to the r…
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…political benefit from attacking cultural symbols of “the sixties.” Every new round brings new symbolic issues, however. In 2004, much media attention was focused on social issues like abortion and gay rights. In fact, though, more careful post-election studies found that the key to Bush’s success was the voters’ fear of terrorism. Yet for the many churchgoers who voted Republican because they were still seeking the spirituality of dwelling, the…
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As I was driving to see Four Blood Moons, a new docu-drama about Biblical prophecy, an enormous storm blew in. During the film, long rumbles of thunder interrupted interviews about prophets, lunar cycles, and civilizational war. Lightning flickered in the west as we left. It’s awfully tempting to read omens into natural phenomena, isn’t it? Picture it: you’re sitting in a suburban Raleigh cinema, watching a wall-sized projection of a Texas mega-p…
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…and England that eventually led to World War II, George Orwell reviewed a new edition of Mein Kampf in the New English Weekly (the same edition available at the Gutenberg link above). His words about Hitler—written five years before Animal Farm (1945) and nine years before Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)—are prescient for the American context today: Ever since [Hitler] came to power—till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking t…
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