Religion Dispatches
…olleague Hussein Rashid pointed out in this must-read piece), Mormons, the number two most disliked religion in America, have no business contributing to public rage against the number one most disliked religion in America. Nor in trafficking in falsehoods like “Islam is an ideology, not a religion,” a line I’ve been hearing from a few Mormons in recent days. Islam is in fact a religion for which Mormon leaders from the time of George A. Smith…
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…failed predictions of Jesus’ return to our cultural fixation with the shuffling creatures we call zombies, we won’t stop thinking about the end. Alternatively, maybe we simply cannot. After all, throughout history the end of the world has always been near—despite the fact that the end has yet to happen. The dichotomy matters. At the end of January, emails flooded my inbox with links to articles that detailed the story of the Strack family. I’m cu…
Read More…t’s not a proud day for freedom of religion when a prominent member of the number two most disliked major religion in America effectively sides against a honest project by the number one most disliked major religion in America. Especially when Mormons have just recently come through our own years-long struggle to build an LDS temple in Center City Philadelphia after Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter tried to extract a six-figure sum from the Churc…
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…, represented was the triumph of a new kind of mathematical science, where numbers and computation were esteemed in a whole new way. Copernicus, be sure to recall, did not yet have access to the telescope, so he was basing a number of his computations on things he could not see. In this brave new world, then, the scientists were also casting their “faith in things not seen.” It’s just that what they “saw” was perceived to run counter to the Roman…
Read More…al, leaving the American church with a massive money problem and shrinking numbers of parishioners on the eve of Pope Francis’ arrival. A recent study by Nicholas Bottan and Ricardo Perez-Trugila in the Journal of Public Economics revealed that, unsurprisingly, “a scandal causes a persistent decline in the local Catholic affiliation and church attendance.” “Some Catholics join other religious denominations during the first three years after a scan…
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…alin shared her view that the Obama presidency could shore up sagging poll numbers by invading Iran. Fertility experts have brought us the “Octomom,” and experts on the meaning of the biblical decree to “go forth and multiply” have TV viewers goggle-eyed over the nearly score of Duggar children in Arkansas. In following the Ray story over the past few months, I am amazed at the number of non-Indian sweat lodge experts the media has been able to lo…
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…oul as no picture ever had, literally bowling her over, leaving her on the floor in “a great flood of tears,” overmastered by the feeling that “He was within me, or that I was totally engulfed in Him.”11 In American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon, the historian of religion Stephen Prothero traces the history of chromos, wallet-sized prints, posters, and other mass-produced images as zeitgeist weathervanes, spun this way and that…
Read More…ental disturbance and the fact that American civilians have more assault rifles in their possession than does the U.S. military. All well and good. But we have too few leaders who will talk about the deeper roots of these things or attempt to explain why American culture is “exceptional”—exceptional in its toxicity, that is. A growing number of truth telling historians are eager to help us discover these deeper roots if we are willing to listen. H…
Read More…rci Bowers has worked with the program extensively. Clitoraid engaged in a number of fund raising projects, including an “Adopt a Clitoris” campaign and a number of partnerships with companies that make vibrators. This funding was used to recruit and fund a team of surgeons (who are not Raelians) and to establish a “pleasure hospital” in Burkina Faso. There is some controversy as to what percentage of women who undergo the surgery will be able to…
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…not, in the United States you will be subject to laws that are directly influenced by Christianity’s historical ambivalence about, and even fear of, the body and sex. A dominant line of Christian theology has identified the “lusts of the flesh” with human fallenness—sometimes called “original sin”—and seen sex and the body as places where humans are especially liable to exhibit possessiveness, greed, and corruption. A lesser tradition within Chri…
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