Religion Dispatches
…in several countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia. In early 2012, a Shiite militia group in Iraq—where homosexuality is not illegal—tortured and murdered more than forty men thought to be homosexual. The murders were denounced by Iraqi human rights groups as well as by international LGBT activists. The Iraqi government did not condemn or even address the murders. All this may seem shocking, but, sadly, the criminalization and severe legal pun…
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…ost certainly under-reports the actual figure. In the US, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs reported earlier this year that, based on data collected from 13 states and Puerto Rico, almost three-quarters of LGBTQ homicides in 2013 were transgender women, more than two-thirds trans women of color. In Wales, Liberal Democrats marked Transgender Awareness Week by leading a debate in the Welsh Assembly on issues faced by trans people. Ga…
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…ultural critic Benjamin DeMott, in which I had to write a paper on Richard III that explained his behavior through his own eyes. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, to try to put myself into the psyche of such a vile character. It led me to explore ways of understanding the world that I never would have reached on my own. And ultimately, it made me a historian with a greater capacity to imagine alternative ways of being. That, of course, is o…
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…lor—as a relatively marginal or “extremist” dimension of American socio-religious culture. I argue instead that white supremacy is a much more central part of American socio-religious culture than generally acknowledged and that its investigation cannot be limited to “lone wolf” racists such as the 21 year-old in Charleston—nor confined merely to networks of explicit white supremacist organizations and activists. Rather, behind the individually em…
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In 2020, the rise of the so-called religious “Nones”—those who claim no religious affiliation—has evolved from a story of interest to a small niche of readers into an entire genre on the religion beat. While the term None has some usefulness as a blanket descriptor, we are beginning to understand that most individual stories about religious disaffiliation are far more complicated than just checking “none of the above” on a survey. Stories about t…
Read More…in tune with the needs of Catholics in the pews than many of the John Paul II appointees who still dominate the bishops’ conference. That’s fair enough. But as I said, that’s a long way off and Gallicho doesn’t offer any data to support his opinion. He goes on to suggest that disillusionment with the church in the wake of Humanae Vitae is some pet issue of mine and not, as Garry Wills called it “the most crippling, puzzling blow to organized Catho…
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…with some care, by reminding us, first, of some important dates. Pope Paul III established the modern Inquisition in 1542; it was designed to deal with persons, primarily those who evidenced what was deemed to be a willful adherence to ideas contradicted by Catholic Orthodoxy. This language is instructive, because faith was understood to be partly an act of will in the Early Modern period. Thus, Protestant kinds of free thinking amounted, in the C…
Read More…arvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” do the talking for him. Hearing Gaye’s exquisite plaintive voice allowed me to weep openly. Weep for a country that seems irredeemably lost in so many ways, a country where, in the words of Paul Simon’s equally haunting “American Tune”: I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered I don’t have a friend who feels at ease I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered or driven to its knees The thing is, we do know wha…
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…red affable and friendly. He was also widely unknown even in Washington political circles until recently (when asked about Johnson, Republican Senator Susan Collins said she didn’t know who he was and would have to Google him first). There are however a small handful of political commentators who don’t have to Google Johnson to know who he is and what he stands for: Those who’ve been writing about White Christian nationalism in the U.S. for years….
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…mmunal version of dissenting Protestantism developed into such a ripe recruiting ground for the sanctified capitalism of our financialized, upward-skewing, and uniquely destructive market order.” Author Lehmann is neither a professional historian nor a religion specialist. He’s a brainy journalist, part of the Baffler set. His subtle treatment of complex subject matter reminds us that it’s always deep reading and a capacity to write clearly that m…
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