Religion Dispatches
…1968, and Athens in 2008 is an instructive one. It may help to explain the latest firebombing of the French Institute in Athens on Friday. The graffiti left by the youth who did it, written in French, makes it “Spark in Athens, fire in Paris. Insurrection is coming,” read one. “France, Greece, uprising everywhere,” read another. Now, in one way, European students may bear the marks of these memories, the violent legacy of activism and protest, mor…
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…with respect to student conduct in the face of public scrutiny. Before the latest change, APU alum and Brave Commons leader Erin Green, who has worked closely with APU students from the beginning of the push for change, began encouraging students to file challenges to APU’s accreditation with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, an effort she has now called off. Green is cautiously optimistic that APU’s move to allow same-sex dating ma…
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…, Pope Francis is more popular than ever in America. Pew Research Center’s latest analysis reveals that seven in ten Americans hold a favorable view of him, while 11% have no opinion. Where these numbers begin to get interesting is in religious breakdown. American Catholics appear to be very fond of the pope, with 87% expressing a favorable view of him, but among white evangelicals his ratings are not so high—only 53% favor the pope, whereas white…
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…text-based chat rooms to 3D environments like Second Life (shameless self-promotion: you can find an investigation of this in my book, Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life). The most popular destination in Stephenson’s Metaverse is The Street, a high tech, chic mixture of nightclubs, shopping, and occasional housing for the early innovating glitterati. Seeking relief from the corporate dystopia surrounding them,…
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…re the news of his crimes hit. But it could, so it would, and it did. This latest twist about lifting immunity is meant to convince that they were really doing the right thing all along. It rings suspiciously hollow. A certain slime factor hovers over this case—evil so deep and enduring that few people want to talk about it. The sheer number of victims and their willingness to come forward despite whatever stigma they might endure give this case s…
Read More…not abridge the rights and benefits that a state must afford to same-sex couples. It remains to be seen how effective this particular case—with its backing from powerful Republican leaders in Texas—will be in gutting the freedom to marry in the Lone Star State. But it does signal the latest, and clearest to-date, sign that marriage equality is far from legally settled. As long as there are right-wing politicians and civilians willing to claim that…
Read More…, St. Matthew in the City, is again cleaning up after vandals attacked the latest billboard it erected for Easter. The billboard features “a cartoon of a bearded Jesus nailed to the cross with the caption: ‘Well this sucks. I wonder if they’ll remember anything I said. . .’” Vandals were not amused by the church’s cheeky sign and again defaced it—only this time, the vandals didn’t just indulge in mindless destruction. Instead, as church spokesman…
Read More…ffice to issue marriage licenses to all eligible couples who want one, the latest setback for the Kentucky county clerk who went to jail rather than issue licenses to gay couples. … “Such an approach would not only create piecemeal litigation, it would be inconsistent with basic principles of justice and fairness,” [Judge] Bunning wrote. – Reuters, Sept. 24, 2015 Dear Kim Davis, I am so glad to see that you are finally able to sit down and explain…
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…ing high in the ratings game these days with Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, the latest offering to confirm mainstream media’s deep investment in portraying a one-dimensional and abject South. The old weary stereotypes slide down smoothly, like the creamy underlayer of a hashbrown casserole. It takes too much work to refract the South through a variegated interpretive lens; and besides, would consumers buy into this multifaceted vision anyway? Don’t the…
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…s a fight about numbers. And balance. And the virtue of justice. What this latest budget battle, and the question of raising the debt ceiling, and the straw polls are revealing, is just how Tertullian a wing of the Republican Party has become. It not only offers absurd arguments with a straight face, but actually insists that belief in the absurdity of the nation’s fundamental fiscal health is a central tenet of the true faith: patriotism. To expr…
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