Religion Dispatches
…e billions in lost revenue occupy much of the news, the question of responsibility remains central. And who is responsible? Who is to blame? Unfortunately, the two most popular interpretations offer little help. They do, however, provide useful illustrations of the kind of thinking that helped create the crisis in the first place and they also suggest a deeper interpretation in light of faith in God. The first interpretation I will call a version…
Read More…urch groups and Christian schools. Their party supply catalog always contains a small section dedicated to Jesus merchandise, which results in some odd juxtapositions. Here, for example, are the current most popular category themes on the OTC website: …
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…orld, Canadian news is often filled with the latest updates on the quasi-criminal actions and clearly racist and sexist pronouncements of US politicians. In the past month, however, Canadians who follow the news have had to look their own racism, sexism, and criminality straight in the eye. In the space of two weeks in February 2018, two juries acquitted white men accused of murdering young Indigenous people, raising charges of systemic injustice…
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…nes. But the fullest expression of thermodynamic warfare came in World War II: blitzkriegs, tanks, bombing raids, and charnel houses. The apotheosis of the thermodynamic paradigm came with the fission bomb that exploded over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, unleashing the force locked inside every atom. This obsession with energy continued through the early years of the Cold War, as the superpowers raced to build the fastest fighter planes and pack th…
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…It might be even harder to imagine Ben Franklin submitting to these indignities. Or George Washington. Or Theodore or Franklin Roosevelt. But all of them did, along with eleven other presidents, and a great many of the leading politicians, generals, artists, and scientists of this country and several others. And some of them have done even more outlandish things as part of their commitment to Freemasonry. Perhaps because Masonry and its legends a…
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…id, entering offices, climbing walls, threatening the safety of elected officials, and waving a Confederate flag for good measure. In response, President Trump repeated his false claims of election fraud, calling the insurrectionists “very special” and saying to them, “We love you.” President-Elect Biden’s response was impassioned, and rightly condemned the seditious assault on the Capitol, but it was also inadequate precisely because he continued…
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…artist,” she became the genre’s biggest star between 1998 and 2002, when—citing burnout—she walked away from the industry. Eight years later, Knapp returned with a mainstream rock album called Letting Go. And she came out publicly as a lesbian [as Douglas Harrison covered at that time, here on RD –Eds.]. Recently, I caught up with Knapp to discuss what motivated her to return to music and what she struggles with being both gay and Christian. We a…
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…was this Passover different from any other Passover? I was 34 years old, living in Washington DC and working for peace and racial justice. I had grown up in a Jewish neighborhood in Baltimore with a strong sense that community, neighborhood itself, was warmly Jewish; that freedom and justice were profoundly, hotly “Jewish and beyond”—and that Jewish religion was boring boiler-plate. Except for celebrating the Passover Seder, which brought family,…
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…erences and cared for everyone. There are many dichotomies we are fond of dividing America into: black and white, rich and poor, native and immigrant, gay and straight, urban and rural, and however else you draw your lines. Coach Wooden transcended many of those simple dichotomies, offering wisdom accessible to almost anyone. He was born in Hall, Indiana, four years before the Great War, later moving to the “big” town of Martinsville, population 4…
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…ed from another Southern Baptist college in Missouri, and a 22-year-old aspiring minister from Philadelphia who quotes Proverbs, declares his love for God—and laments the recent breakup of his relationship with a boyfriend. They are all members or supporters of Soulforce, an organization that aims to change the hearts of those who use religion to justify discrimination against sexual minorities. Most of the 20-somethings in the crowd are participa…
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