Religion Dispatches
…piece), Mormons, the number two most disliked religion in America, have no business contributing to public rage against the number one most disliked religion in America. Nor in trafficking in falsehoods like “Islam is an ideology, not a religion,” a line I’ve been hearing from a few Mormons in recent days. Islam is in fact a religion for which Mormon leaders from the time of George A. Smith and Parley P. Pratt in 1855 have expressed respect. …
Read More…ive sectors of the Anglo Mormon Utah base, a broad coalition of religious, business and law enforcement officials laid the groundwork for reform when they devised the Utah Compact—a statement that acknowledged the contributions of immigrants and expressed support for immigrant families—last November. The Utah Compact signaled the Church’s intent to break publicly and decisively with an all-enforcement anti-immigrant road-to-nowhere approach like A…
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…curriculum vitae. Over the course of the announcements, the so-called “Episcopacy” has become less Anglican and more ethnic. In 1997, Brooks tallied that “40 percent of the ceremonies are Jewish, only 17 percent are Episcopalian, 15 percent are Catholic, 13 percent are other Protestant, and 15 percent are non-religious or non-denominational.” Twelve years later, Jews remain in the lead, although with only 26 percent of the ceremonies. The other co…
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…The sacrifice of hair to the gods is the source of much of the human hair business in the United States. In fact, Rock’s documentary informs us that the hair cut for temple sacrifices is now the number-one export out of India. The fact that tonsure, a religious act, has turned into a profiteering scheme is remarkable. But there also exist unscrupulous people who are stealing women’s hair, either while they sleep or in movie theaters where their b…
Read More…prohibitive regulations on abortion clinics designed to drive them out of business. He opposed a bill that stated that contraception is not abortion. Cuccinelli’s culture war coup de grace, though, was this gem: “My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that. … They don’t comport with nat…
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…ory. The Not For Sale Campaign, one of the driving forces behind this documentary, brings together a wide swathe of people including faith groups, students, teachers, artists, and the business community to mobilize together for this common cause. Time will tell if this grassroots movement for good can produce real results. …
Read More…ying that “it really smacks of witch-hunts and thought-police. It’s not my business to ‘renounce.’” And Ben-Ami added his own critique of the book, saying that “this notion that somehow Jews control this country, they control our foreign policy, that there is some diabolical conspiracy behind the scenes, this is when you cross that line. I believe that the analysis in the Walt and [John] Mearsheimer book and article crossed that line, but this do…
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…narrator to manage his survival, both through his writing and through his business. It is also what creates the experience of the novel. Though Hall plans to publish American Fever in book form after its conclusion, I don’t think the experience of reading it in print will be as rich as reading it on the screen. Much of what makes American Fever tick is in the way that it can blur the fictional and real words of fear and illness. With its careful…
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…ian religion to American culture. Non-Indians have been making a lucrative business out of the appropriation of Native ceremonies for years. Ray’s weeklong event in Sedona cost each participant more than $9,000. A search of any number of Web sites advertising these “Indian ceremonies” will turn up sweat lodges that average over $100 per event, and four-day “vision quests” going for around five hundred dollars, “all meals included” and “Visa and Ma…
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…ur national media and political culture often succumb to the temptation to classify people who take extreme political acts, particularly of violence, as lone nuts, in fact such people are not necessarily either nuts or alone. Even when acting individually (as Chris Broughton did when he brought an automatic weapon to an Obama speech), they are frequently operating out of a particular religious, cultural, and political context. Absent the distracti…
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