Religion Dispatches
…ion about the two books prior to this one I would have given you a laundry list of things I would have done differently. But Holy Ghosts was really a miracle for me in that it was the book where I found my true voice. This is my most personal writing to date. Though this book is a ghost story it is very much a memoir so the writing had to be personal. It’s a serious book, but anyone who knows me knows I’m a bit of a smartass and I make lots of mis…
Read More…xuality, which Rushdoony did. But I have argued that this rather sensationalist approach to examining the place of Reconstructionism in contemporary politics undermines efforts to see real influence. DeMint doesn’t advocate stoning, even though he aligns himself with Reconstructionists. He does advocate undoing decades of efforts to secure basic civil rights for gays and lesbians (and apparently for unmarried women as well). He does, it seems, su…
Read More
…thought of that argument with my neighbor, and about my frustration, while listening to Boyd K. Packer’s talk at the General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints this past Sunday. I knew five minutes into this talk that it was going to set the bloggernacle abubble (as Joanna Brooks has already described here on RD). I put down the Sudoku puzzle I was fiddling with and paid attention. I was fascinated by it. And I was trans…
Read More…raging kids from taunting other kids perceived to be gay or lesbian would “promote homosexuality to kids.” In the past few weeks, the effect of Focus’ push to block anti-bullying laws is being felt by at least three families who have lost children to suicide. Truth Wins Out compiled this list: • Seth Walsh, the Bakersfield, CA 13-year-old who hanged himself from a tree in his back yard after years of being bullied, died Tuesday afternoon after nin…
Read More
…ip to people who had more than one wife or husband. Some people, fundamentalists, still teach that if you have a living wife or husband you can’t marry again, because divorce is a sin. You can remain single and be a member but the former person has to die before you can marry again. So what the dilemma was was that slaves didn’t have any control over who their life partners or mates would be. A slave woman could easily be sold away from her man, o…
Read More…a media blackout of the event. Meanwhile, his own daughter has joined the list of folks condemning the event. She called his church a “cult” that uses “mental violence.” Not to be left out in denouncing things, Angelina Jolie also condemned the plan. President Obama called it a “recruitment bonanza” for radical Islamic groups. “Recruitment bonanza” sounds more like a white-collar job fair than an act of Islamophobia. Some shoppers buy kosher not…
Read More
…s strange and surprising ways with the world.” Scholars and religion journalists are just beginning to address the impact of religious apps on the shaping of formal and informal religious life, but it is certain that these technologies—along with Facebook religious group pages and religiously-themed Twitter feeds (both often linked to apps)—are making a powerful claim on normative religious faith. This is abundantly clear with regard to the Bible,…
Read More
…ill. Even with Richard Gere in tow, his visits are mostly ignored by journalists, bloggers, and news celebrities, as well as their audiences. Love for your fellow man and kindness to your neighbor just isn’t as appealing as calling your opponent Hitler or burning the sacred text from a different faith. Why is that? Maybe we should take a survey. The media, of course, is not the only culprit in promoting a culture that values hate; though its unoff…
Read More
…e.” I also had one of my pre-hajj talks with my shaykh, who also gave me a list of do, persons to pray for, and some important reminders about etiquette. So I think about the Joan Osborn song. What would you ask, if you had just one question? I’ve thought about it before. And I’ve thought about it a lot. Still nothing comes to mind just yet. Last year, when a friend of mine who lives in Madinah solicited prayers from people before her fourth or fi…
Read More
…led by the John Birch Society and the Liberty Lobby. The Zeitgeist website lists Nation writer William Greider — a longtime critic of the Fed’s policies from the left — as an “information source,” particularly his 1989 tome, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country. But the list is otherwise populated by right-wing conspiracy theorists. In Secrets, Greider maintains: The conspiracy-minded critics exaggerated the importance o…
Read More