Religion Dispatches
…harist, it included a restatement of a prohibition of totally wheat-gluten-free hosts. This was often reported as something of a snub of the Celiac sufferers (or gluten intolerant) among the faithful. But reading through the directive and the supporting documentation, I was struck by their attempts to accommodate communicants who can’t tolerate some essential aspect of the rite. The bread for the host can be so low in gluten as to qualify for “glu…
Read More…a dormitory and besides going to class and a small part time job, I was a free bird. In Ramadan a free bird, flies high on the rituals of the month. I stood for 20 units or tarawih every night that I was fasting. Like the first time reading through the Qu’ran in Arabic on my own this was exhilarating. Somewhere around 12 or 14 units, I lost track of everything outside of the recitation and the ritual performance—the zone. It was even more intense…
Read More…opic: “We are Catholics. If someone wants to make another church, they are free to do so.” I think what he meant was, we men are the Catholics in charge and women who want to participate equally are free to form their own church. I can assure him on good authority that the process of forming new models of church is well underway with Catholic women serving the needs of the world. I can also brief him on the fact that some of the nuns with whom he…
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…plurality of ownership and decision-making, while resisting pressures from free-market fundamentalists to abandon any regulation or social principles: Right-wing dogmatism, with its sour-faced intolerance and fanatical faith in general precepts, bothers me as much as left-wing prejudices, illusions, and utopias. Today, unfortunately, we often find that a straightforward analysis of specific problems and a calm, unbiased consideration of them are b…
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…ished around the Man as it ignites and burns, once it collapses people are free to surge toward and dance around the pyre.) My nieces puzzled over this for a moment, and soon realized this anonymous individual was indeed shouting “theater” in the midst of a rather “crowded fire.” When they told me this story later that night, I immediately seized on it as the title of what was at the time my dissertation as I thought it spoke brilliantly and provo…
Read More…ight has cost both sides bitterly. By focusing on the covenantal agreement between God and Abraham, both Muslims and Jews have lost sight of God’s inclusivity. As a result, for thousands of years the sons of Isaac have viewed the sons of Ishmael as potential enemies, and vice versa. Each side sees the other as the opponent in a battle for God’s single blessing. Here’s the catch. God did not just bestow one blessing. “So what?” hard-liners will say…
Read More…and music, was devoted to his wife and daughters, and gave his money away freely. Jacoby makes a convincing case that Ingersoll belongs to the egalitarian and humanistic thread of American secularism rather than Social Darwinist thread. And, in fact, Ingersoll stoutly rejected the contempt for the “lower orders” (immigrants, people of color) that was being shown in the 1880s and onward by leading Darwinists like Herbert Spencer and William Graham…
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…om which—I will risk this seeming blasphemy—it would not be well for it to free itself completely: and that is the cult of the human being, of the human body, mind and flesh, feeling and will, instinct and conscience. Sometimes flesh, feeling and instinct have the upper hand, and sometimes mind, will and conscience, for these are the two despots who strive for primacy within us, and whose conflict often rends us cruelly. We have to attain a balanc…
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…n’s bodily autonomy was emphasized, but as the saying goes “none of us are free until all of us are free.” It begs the question as to which women’s rights matter when US imperialism is responsible for dropping bombs on countries where women are using tent cloth as menstrual products because they’re displaced and don’t have access to what should be basic hygiene products or basic anesthetic during childbirth. There was little talk about the details…
Read More…onsequential things. They matter. Sure, in the modern world we do have the freedom to choose our guiding stories. And, here in postmodernity, we do have theories that relativize and contextualize, making that choice seem arbitrary. But none of this means that, once we’ve chosen an idea, it exists in a vacuum, tickling our minds and having no effect on things like, say, funding for scientific research, or the rights of children to have a public edu…
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