Religion Dispatches
…is behind the protests, and that Obama is somehow linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, and an evil plot to subvert “Judeo-Christian” values, America, and Western civilization — swirling around conservative media in the coming days….
Read More…ng story.” In forty-six years of Zen practice I’ve observed Asian (and now Western) swamis, tulkus, roshis, rishis, dharma heirs, lineage holders, and masters of various stripes, as well as their disciples, explain that the master’s fiscal extravagance, alcoholism, cruelty, sex addiction, violence, and even rape is – of all things – “a teaching!” […] This is a Mad Hatter’s tea party, where hierarchical robes and titles, sadomasochistic austerities…
Read More
…l as in the capital Delhi, even though media failed to give much coverage. Western followers of Tibetan Buddhism, a significant source of tourist revenue to Himachal Pradesh and elsewhere, remain extremely disappointed, more at the media than the authorities. An initiation into politics The sheer preposterousness of the claims, about the Karmapa’s status as a “spy” in particular, did lead international Tibet specialists, such as Dibyesh Anand and…
Read More
…extension, the news media that reports on them. More broadly, contemporary Western societies may have entered a period of what philosopher Jürgen Habermas calls “post-secular,” which is to say that, in a sense, religion has been there all along. If philosophers, politicians, and artists want to talk about religion, fine—but for God’s sake, alt-rockers too?! Alternative rock, with its default anti-establishment stance (whether feigned or forthright…
Read More
…e her an exceptional woman and gospel singer. Burke’s influence on country western music, as well as the Rolling Stones, Al Green and others, was a seamless marriage of the sacred and secular. Burke, ordained at the age of 7, also was a licensed mortician, coupling two of the historic occupations for African American men in the early portion of the 20th century. Born into a family of female preachers, Burke’s grandmother started a church in West P…
Read More
…expressions are increasingly displaced outside the bounds of the dominant Western cultural concepts of “religion.” Burning Man is on the vanguard of contemporary religious movements that resist easy classification by favoring eclecticism and hybridity. Yet in articulating a clear ethos that places a core emphasis on building and supporting community—both inside and outside the confines of the week-long event—Burning Man manages to be individualis…
Read More…in to the night? Why shouldn’t we? I’ll tell you why we shouldn’t. Before Western people go to the Middle East in Ramadan, they are warned to be very patient, because things will not get done very efficiently. I was amazed when I lived in Egypt how government workers came to the offices several hours late each day of Ramadan, and then left for home and a nap several hours early. Obviously, you can’t have it both ways: up and about all night and t…
Read More…ze and establish the faith more effectively beyond the religion’s American Western ethnic core. But this “disenchantment” or “secularization” has left many multi-generational Mormons longing for the intensity of our old identity as “peculiar people.” Daughtrey writes: In a secularized, routinized, or demythologized Mormonism (which looks more like mainline Protestantism than the mystical tradition established by Joseph Smith), the religion is miss…
Read More
…Texas than just a debate about events and dates. It’s about who we are as Westerners—and I mean Western civilization—and how we think of ourselves as individuals and citizens. Because in Texas, that’s about to change big time. And if we all buy their textbooks, it’s going to change for us, too. If anything, this little escapade that started about national textbook sales and has now turned into an epic ideological battle about how the West underst…
Read More
…ty. The language of the haircut restrictions centers around “Islamic” and “Western.” It is not coincidental that these events are happening in close temporal proximity to one another. The New York Times emphasizes the “clash of civilizations” myth in this ruling, without really thinking through the implications or causes of the ban 30 years after the revolution. These two elements, the Green Movement and the European marginalization of their Musli…
Read More