Religion Dispatches
…don’t know, but I know what we’re supposed to. Comment till our faces turn blue. We should inhale some of David V. Johnson’s argument at Jacobin, that we as a society forego moral sentimentalism in favor of the substantive issues that demand action. Structural challenges, not personal endowments. Whose business is it whether Weiner’s wife was well and fully informed or not? Is there some rule that unfaithful men make bad leaders? (George W. Bush….
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…s effects, not only on “cultured” bodies, but bodies raced as “white” and “blue” as well. Menakem previously worked with soldiers suffering from PTSD. Now, he’s working to help Americans, but specifically Black Americans, heal from racial trauma before that trauma is redirected into violence. That Black Americans have a history steeped in trauma and continue to experience new traumas is by design. The design has been codified into our Constitution…
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…by running a photo from his page on the “Paganspace” Web site that shows a blue-robed Halloran kneeling before his ritual tools. “So, who do you think is going to win that City Council race between ‘Democratic Victor’ Kevin Kim and ‘Pagan Lord’ Dan Halloran?” asked Reid Pillifant in his story in the New York Observer on September 18, 2009. A day earlier, a news story identifying Halloran as a King (priest) of Theodism, a form of Norse Paganism, ra…
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…assionately preached to a warm congregation of earnest Black people in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia. Yet I have equally vivid memories of my father’s passionate commitment to the Citizens League, a group of people in my hometown who met regularly on many Mondays to discuss and enact tangible ways to improve civic life—from poverty eradication to voter engagement. The faithful piety my father exhibited on Sunday compelled him to e…
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…ial time with John Paul II. Some stood silently during his remarks wearing blue armbands to signal their support of women’s ordination. It was all quite genteel, including Theresa’s historic remarks delivered calmly without rancor or regret: As I share this privileged moment with you, Your Holiness, I urge you to be mindful of the intense suffering and pain which is part of the life of many women in these United States. I call upon you to listen w…
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…a lotus, the BJP’s official party symbol, embellished with red, white, and blue and the om symbol superimposed onto the U.S. flag [see above]. Shockingly, given Trump’s anti-immigrant posturing, there were signs adorning the arena stating, “Trump For Faster Green Cards.” But the event’s most outstandingly awful moment came with a dance performance in which two sets of Indian actors, each consisting of a man and a woman engaged in a romantic dance,…
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…ts walked in, I felt superior that my creator did not frown on my family’s blue jeans. Now that I’m older, I actually feel a kinship with folks who think dancing is sinful. It isn’t that I’ve come back around to loving the Lord. It’s that I’ve heard (or in this case, read) enough stories of compassionate understanding from believers and atheists alike to know that my way isn’t better than anyone else’s. Simply put, blessing is better than impressi…
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…n, the film that launched “sex kitten” Brigitte Bardot, 1953’s The Moon is Blue, and 1948’s L’Amore. This last movie led to an historic Supreme Court ruling known as the “Miracle Decision” that found that motion pictures were a form of artistic expression protected by the First Amendment, not, as the church asserted, a powerful medium for the communication of morality that had to be censored for society’s own good. That decision, the growing popul…
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…engeance now? Do storms only evince heavenly displeasure when they land on blue states? Finding the hand of God in the vagaries of barometric pressure has a time-honored history, after all. Hurricane Katrina? Punishment for the “immorality” of New Orleans, of course, according to a priest recently promoted to bishop (after making those remarks) by Pope Benedict XVI. Even Glenn Beck (remember him?) opined that the recent catastrophes in Japan const…
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…omen who admire me?” I told him, “I always give them five or six names and numbers, and the press says, ‘we’ve gone to them, and they won’t talk.’” I said to reporters, “I can only tell you my experience, and my experience is that he’s not accepting of people who are different, particularly women who are single who he has to deal with one-on-one.” Lots of women told me, “Don’t give the press my name anymore,” some because they had negative things…
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