Religion Dispatches
…tions ravenous for rights, dignity, and prosperity. In short, thank the world’s largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, for a big order signed on the occasion of President Obama’s visit (230 planes at $21.7 billion!). And thank one of the world’s fastest-growing airlines, Emirates from Dubai, for the other (50 jets at $18 billion). So here’s to cooperation of the civilizations. Here’s to throwing facts in the face of faux analysis. While Victoria Jackso…
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…kepocalypse”: for the first time ever, the event sold out. Scalpers hawked tickets for hundreds of dollars over their purchase price and artists who had been working feverishly to finish their projects but had put off purchasing tickets were left out in the cold. It was a different scene in 1997 when I first came to Burning Man and only waited briefly at the entrance as a “Greeter” cast a cursory glance at my car. But the Greeters’ enthusiastic re…
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…rs were among the cities hit hardest by massive downturns in resources, as businesses and corporations relocated to better markets in the suburbs or overseas and as middle-class populations fled urban core neighborhoods for outer-ring or suburban locales. Both of these dynamics contributed to vastly diminished property values, tax revenues, and local urban economies—resulting in fewer resources for public schools, public services, and urban infras…
Read More…as Yugoslav, and most recently almost destroyed. And today? As I board the flight to Sarajevo, I’m not sure if I should expect a post-Soviet wasteland, an eerily quiet former war zone, or something else. The flight, though, is reassuringly undistinguished. There are lots of Bosnians, white and Western enough to pass for everyday Americans, though the occasional hijabs might throw you off. There are a few Americans, who seem to be intrepid backpack…
Read More…artners in Israel,” notes the Times. “Civil marriage does not exist in the country, where the solemnization of marriage is entirely controlled by the state rabbinate, and homosexual unions are not in themselves recognized.” Vietnam: Couple marries on airplane flight A Vietnamese lesbian couple celebrated a Valentine’s Day wedding on a Vietjet flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Bangkok. Pink News notes, “Same-sex marriage is not legally recognized in…
Read More…cation of his religious worldview served to insulate him from conservative flight. Bump writes that Robertson’s “comments about black Americans were buried under a rush to defend the right of Christian Americans to express disapproval of gays,” and that, compared to Bundy Robertson “did a much better job leveraging political sentiment in his favor after his controversial remarks.” But Robertson didn’t have to do much leveraging; his comments came…
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…the person killed, with color-coded ribbons differentiating civilians and flight crews from first responders. Orlando, Florida, on the logic that far more were injured in both visible and “invisible” ways, has opted to erect 250,000 flags. It is not death that is primary here, in any case. The flag’s sacrality, to use an oft-invoked religious term for the societal roles this emblem plays, is linked to its resistance of a single straight meaning….
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…ared up he would walk through the badly hit neighborhoods to prevent white flight and counsel the victims of the attacks. His hands-on approach to fighting racism is reminiscent of a barefoot Gandhi taking up residence in an East Bengali village after fighting between Hindus and Muslims threatened to destroy the region. Of the many new religious movements of the 1960s and ’70s, Peoples Temple is probably the only one that can boast an agenda that…
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…this pope. Just how much dancing is required became apparent after the in-flight chat with journalists and Francis’ now-famous statement: “if a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has goodwill, well who am I to judge them?” When it comes to making trouble in the dioceses, Francis is practicing what he preaches. Many bishops in this country went into containment mode, issuing statements to their local churches about what the pope had said and es…
Read More…al nail in the coffin of American liberty. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a Flight 93 election. This may be our last shot. It’s time to roll. It’s time to run down the aisle and save western civilization . . . This country is the equivalent of that hijacked plane right now. We’re headed to a disaster, unless we can get control of the cockpit again. Trump made clear what it meant to save Western Civilization. In a nutshell, it is to resurrect and de…
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