Religion Dispatches
…r of Muslims, but it was New York that did that. The city of my birth, the city under attack, was also the city that refused to retreat into cowardice. I have nearly a dozen stories of people who said to me, in either words or deeds, that if you are a New Yorker, it does not matter your faith; come and grieve with us. I traveled the country giving talks about Muslims after 9/11, but the safest, warmest, and most trusting I ever felt was in New Yor…
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…amascus is taking place just off Interquest Parkway in Colorado Springs, a city referred to as the Jerusalem of evangelicalism. Meet Ted Haggard 2.0 “I’m going to teach the Scripture,” Haggard tells me in his living room two days before the service. “But I’m going to teach it first person singular. I’m going to tell you how God has worked in my life and you can work it out with my story with the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit and how God’s going t…
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…ans would be attracted to, appreciate and consider careers in science (the number is decreasing annually). I bet we’d have more productive conversation among students and leaders of science and religion around the many profound issues in our nation that engage both: abortion, medical care, stem cells, homosexuality, and genomic research. The battle rhetoric would fade and, more than likely, movies like Expelled wouldn’t be made in the first place….
Read More…es ECI’s leadership – knows this to be the case. Which makes ECI’s video a cheap lie — yet another in a long litany of desperate efforts by the far right to convert the largely liberal American Jewish community to neo-conservatism, hawkish policies on Israel, and the belief that “Barack Hussein Obama” is a Muslim. That said, there actually are two interesting forms of antisemitism going on here. First is the antisemitism of ECI itself. To tug at…
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…I fervently wish that Mr. Obama would say a bit more about the problem of cheap grace. Reminding us that people who work very hard for very little are not the abusers of cheap grace, but that others in well-feathered nests who are preaching sacrifice might be in real trouble on the cheap grace front. Obama cannot and should not condemn those in the electorate who buy into Romney’s “there will be showers of blessing” message, but he probably does …
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…orthodox religions—mesmerism, spiritualism and the like. Because New York City has long been a magnet for those seeking access to hidden forces, or to reveal them. Whether we believe in it or not, there’s no denying that magic runs through the history of New York City like one of those freshwater springs beneath the Manhattan asphalt. Kevin Dann’s new book, Enchanted New York: A Journey Along Broadway Though Manhattan’s Magical Past, looks to bri…
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…lectorate than it is with straight voters. LePen’s Party, which includes a number of openly gay officials, still pledges to roll back the marriage equality law in favor of civil unions. As AP notes, LePen is not the only nationalist leader who uses fear of radical Islamist violence to attract LGBT support: In the Netherlands, Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders said that his party, which is hostile to Muslims and wants to halt immigration, shou…
Read MoreTomorrow in Salt Lake City, legal scholar and George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley will file suit to challenge Utah statutes criminalizing cohabitation and bigamy. The plaintiffs in the suit? Kody Brown and his four wives, stars of the reality show Sister Wives. Turley is expected to argue for the decriminalization of polygamy by citing Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 US Supreme Court decision that decriminalized sodomy on the g…
Read More…ngs in a handcart from Council Bluffs, Iowa, westward across the plains to Salt Lake. When I was a little girl in a Southern California suburb, I donned a pioneer calico bonnet and skirt handmade by my mother every July 24 to celebrate my great-great-grandmother and other ancestors who had come from as far away as England to build an American Zion in Utah and Idaho. As an adult, I have reclaimed the holiday. My daughters and I have a new set of ca…
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…ighted village sings a wrenching song about reaching the storied paradise, Salt Lake City, where, she imagines, the warlords are friendly and the Red Cross is on every corner. Her belief inevitably leads to despair, as she learns that the paradise Cunningham has spoken of is not a literal place, but a place inside. Her reaction prompts incredulity from her fellow Ugandans, who’ve embraced Cunningham’s stories as metaphors. Referring to part of th…
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