Religion Dispatches
…e of duty for the first time in 33 years. Three others perish with him. An American consulate is destroyed. At the same time, an American flag is torched, while another diplomatic post, an embassy, is stormed in a neighboring Arab Muslim country. Days later, further outbursts against American officials and diplomatic sites occur in two other Arab Muslim countries. The headlines are here stripped of their local names, not to protect the innocent bu…
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…bel, it turns out, was responsible for ousting Hargis from the Tulsa-based American Christian College (founded to teach “anti-communist patriotic Americanism”) after Hargis was embroiled in a sex scandal; Hargis was accused of having sex with four male and one female students; the woman, it turned out, married one of the men in a ceremony officiated by Hargis, and the couple found out on their honeymoon that he had had sex with both of them. But i…
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…beautifully written and offer penetrating analysis of race, the arts, and American identity. What’s your next book? I’m just getting started on a book about the intersections of race, African American religions, and psychiatry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century United States. I’m interested in the way that psychiatric theory framed African and African diaspora religious practices in relation to ideas about normal and disordered mi…
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…ulitzer initiated the first period in US literary history in which “Native American literature” (or “American Indian literature”—take your pick) would be widely recognized as such. The readers of 1968 were ready for Momaday. In the years that followed, Vine Deloria Jr.’s manifesto of Indian self-determination, Custer Died for Your Sins, became a surprise bestseller, and Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee swept the nation with its trenchant…
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…the inclusion of the Ground Zero cross in the 9/11 memorial museum In July American Atheists filed a lawsuit against those who planned to display a cross-shaped piece of wreckage at the 9/11 memorial. In their statement, American Atheists said that the cross was a reminder to Christians “that their God, who couldn’t be bothered to stop the Muslim terrorists or prevent 3,000 people from being killed in his name, cared only enough to bestow upon us…
Read More…more. In the American case, one might argue that with every US Presidency, Americans become more religious. What Americans hear in the utterances of young Protestant politicians like Sarah Palin is how far the re-enchantment of American politics has progressed. At the end of the Bush era, what we’re beginning to bear witness to is a language, and a politics, so thoroughly devoid of liberalism that it can somehow sanction the brutality and the dest…
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…top leadership, as noted above, still consists entirely of straight white American men in their 80s and 90s not known for their open-mindedness or innovation, it seems likely that much of the controversy that has plagued the church will continue. But perhaps now I’ll get an answer to a question I’ve had for several years about one of the songs from The Book of Mormon musical. Will the lyrics to “I Believe,” in which Elder Price affirms his belief…
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…ars as a result of the war in Iraq, and other conflicts in the region. Yet American Christians are more preoccupied with the supposed loss of Christian values and how “America is no longer a Christian Nation.” These hollow vocalizations are accompanied by invoking the founding fathers. While American Christians are mewling piteously, Christians across the world are experiencing real persecution and martyrdom for their faith. Just once, I’d be ecst…
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…ustice Clarence Thomas went so far as to joke in 2018 that Mr. Leo was the number three most powerful person in the world. Thomas belly-laughed as Leo quipped in reply, “God help us! God help us.” Right-wing forms of Christianity have reshaped the political landscape of the US in recent decades, culminating with the current 6-3 conservative Supreme Court majority. But despite the fact that they’ve achieved so much as their numbers have dwindled, a…
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…old?” is available here (pdf). Conference on Race, Religion and Rhetoric: “Americans at the Pulpit and in the Public Square: A conversation on race, religion, and rhetoric in a diverse America,” is a conference organized by the American Jewish Committee and the Office of Black Ministry of the Archdiocese of New York, and is scheduled to be held at Xavier University in New Orleans, from January 17-19. Trouble in Narnia: Bad news for Narnia fans. It…
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