Religion Dispatches
…ns of the brain that remain unactivated in the rest of us. There are any number of weird implications and outright contradictions in these sorts of studies. The first is this: do the authors of these studies believe that religious belief or practice has the power to effect the size of the human brain? If so, that would seem to grant an astonishing power to religion to effect real world, and very nearly miraculous changes. Or perhaps the claim i…
Read More
…of the docuseries features a montage of popular conservative Christian “influencers” who, interviewees say, simply put a millennial pink gloss on the same conservative theologies of gendered authority and sexual control that animated the IBLP. In the days following Shiny Happy People’s release, the influencers featured in the series and plenty of outside commentators have decried what they argue is the series’ anti-Christian messaging. The IBLP i…
Read More
…t devalued his life. Economists value human life at $10 million. Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd asked if his life was worth $20. Twenty dollars. This is why many doctors are supporting the protests. Despite the risks, they understand this as a public health intervention addressing the root causes of racial inequality. And there’s also an important difference between these protests and those in previous eras. They are decidedly multi-…
Read More…ne needn’t look further than his staunch opposition to LGBT rights and his flagrant attacks on women to see the contempt. In the days leading up to Argentina’s legalization of same-sex marriage in July, Bergoglio labeled the push for equality “a destructive attack on God’s plan” and deemed adoption by same-sex couples a form of discrimination against children. And then there are the issues of abortion and contraception. “A child conceived by the r…
Read More
…ith assault rifles—you know, the Three Percenters were there in their camouflage and assault rifles. What happened as you were standing at that intersection on Saturday afternoon? It was late-morning, early Saturday afternoon. Rev. Traci Blackmon and I were holding public witness. We had been in the streets, just speaking to people, to everyone. We were in full clergy gear—my stole had a resistance fist on it, and “Black Lives Matter.” Traci’s int…
Read More…have the greatest concentration of white supremacists in America), I met a number of Christian pastors and activists. Afterwards, a conservative evangelical told me he felt that Islamophobia and Christophobia were similar (I guess it’s better than denying bigotry exists at all). I also received an e-mail from a participant in the event who came by because of RD: Dear Haroon, Thanks for your talk at WSU tonight and [for] your perspective on things….
Read More
…uary, the Duggars actually replaced the candidate on the campaign trail in Florida. Religious differences (the Duggars are Baptists who have followed the fundamentalist teachings of Bill Gothard, while Santorum is a staunch Catholic) seem barely a second thought among supporters, who take for granted that fidelity to culture war issues supercedes faith. There, the Duggars and Santorum seem to speak with one voice. At CPAC in February, Michelle Dug…
Read More…to become better organized as a political force, even as they increase in number. The major impediment to that kind of organization is the fact that it is very difficult for secularists to conceive of themselves in tribal terms. Most tribes, whether of nations or ethnicities or sports fandom, can easily demarcate their membership—it’s the people who look like us, or talk like us, or dress like us. Tribes organized around religious belief have rit…
Read More
…t worth remembering and repeating in a culture that frequently lifts up conflict while ignoring harmony—but that we also carry profoundly important and seemingly irreconcilable differences. In that sense, the conference left me (and I suspect many others) with as many questions as answers. But these questions are vital—and the idea that we can consider them together, without sacrificing our relationships or the civility that undergirds them, is ra…
Read More
…osnia is a country with no prospects, its only claim to fame the incessant flood of its fleeing youth, who barely glance in the rearview mirror as they search for a better life elsewhere. Traces of what led to Bosnia’s demise are unnervingly apparent in the United States. Our political system is a knotted web of malfunctioning processes that propagate and amplify the perils to democracy from every direction. Our elections elevate candidates who do…
Read More