Religion Dispatches
…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
…ho in turn would have to sue Lightspeed Systems for damages. But without a list of the 6,500 American school districts that use Lightspeed Systems, it’s difficult to begin this process. Last week, TST described its conflict with Lightspeed Systems in its newsletter which reaches many high schoolers. As more and more students have come forward complaining that their school uses Lightspeed Systems to block TST’s website, TST’s legal team now regards…
Read More
…at deceiver endows their life with purpose. But as an academic and a journalist, the only thing I fear more than damaging my reputation is an environment in which meaningful conversation is rendered impossible by fervent belief in comfortable falsehoods. I enjoy believing that investment bankers are soulless agents of Big Banking, but not as much as I enjoy believing the truth. The solution, as I see it, is for journalists to chuck their inkwells…
Read More
…rding to that line of reasoning, what would the “practical God,” the gradualist God, the God-who-is-ready-to-lower-his-standards say about the treatment of victims in the German concentrations camps? Meet the Nazis halfway? Let’s spare the children and only send adults to the crematoria? Or feed the concentration inmates on better food and clothe them more decently before exterminating them? And here’s the problem: God is excused on grounds of “gr…
Read More
See here for the full list of discussions so far, or sign up here for the RSS feed. Diane Winston_____________ Watching this week with my mother and daughter (“Why is she shooting at that man? Which reality is this? So are we the bad guys?”), I didn’t need much convincing to see the episode in terms of familial relations: mixed, missed, and mordant. That many of the relationships played out between the poles of opposition and differentiation ma…
Read More
…ico, for example, wryly begins by telling the reader, “Add ‘Bibles’ to the list of items Donald Trump is peddling as his legal fees continue to grow.” Trump’s embrace of a Christian nationalist Bible is framed here as another grift, which is not to be taken seriously. For the savvy reporter, Trump’s embrace of White evangelicalism is just playing the game of politics, and thus requires no further analysis. But we should take the GBUSA seriously. B…
Read More
…handful of organizations like Feminists for Life and the Susan B. Anthony list that have in recent years sought to claim the mantle of feminism for the anti-abortion movement. These groups aren’t looking to join the feminist movement, however, but in the words of New Wave Feminists are “looking to take feminism back from those who have corrupted it.” Anti-abortion feminists assert that the original feminists, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady S…
Read More
…ealth and Human Services asked The Institute of Medicine to come up with a list of women’s health services that should qualify as preventive care and require no co-pay under the Affordable Care Act, the Institute included contraceptive care and counseling in their recommendations, two services that can help right some of the wrongs done to women of color in the area of reproductive justice and liberty. It would be a grave injustice for the Supreme…
Read More
…transferred Biko’s courage and tenacity to make Donald Wood (a white journalist I’d never heard of) the story’s hero. This is how I experienced the book The Help. The second false message is this: The really important point of all cultural production and activity is for white agency and dignity to be actualized. The overarching plot of this book presents the narrative of a young white woman finding herself and her voice amidst cliches, circumscrip…
Read More
…ted on the Supreme Court. That’s shameful, and belongs near the top of the list of dangerous, un-American shenanigans the GOP has subjected the American people to over the past decade. But let’s not kid ourselves. A Supreme Court with Justice Gorsuch seated is no more deeply conservative than it was with Justice Scalia on the bench. Despite the apparent similarities between Gorsuch and Scalia, I actually believe Justice Gorsuch’s legacy will more…
Read More