Religion Dispatches
…w say, “spiritual (or sacred), not religious.” But then, in his judgment, that’s what democracy is all about. The very coin of the democratic realm is “sacred.” Whitman saw the work of fostering such a “religious democracy” as the work of the 20th century, and that task continues unabated today. He warned that there was only one thing that really threatened to undo it: party-thinking. But these savage, wolfish parties alarm me. Owning no law but…
Read More…harsh anti-gay law that would criminalizeeven the dissemination of ideas that promote LGBT equality. Radio Free Europe reports: Kyrgyzstan’s parliament has approved a draft law that bans “propaganda of same-sex relations” in the first reading. Lawmaker Kurmanbek Dyikanbaev told RFE/RL on October 15 that 79 deputies voted for the legislation, while seven voted against it. The law has to pass the parliament’s approval in two more readings and then…
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…id Ruth inserted herself into the messianic genealogy of her host nation. What a contrast to the modern Malthusian premises of zero-sum economics that tilt the lopsided analyses of the exclusionist think tanks, the muckraking reportage of cable news, and the scapegoating rhetoric of politicians! Like the biblical matriarchs, Americans and Mexicans and others are condemned—or blessed—by history and geography to work out joint solutions for each oth…
Read More…ed pawing me. That stunned me so — I couldn’t even imagine something like that — that I even sobered up.” According to Bershidsky, Kuraev “is taking a calculated risk:” He has plenty of supporters among churchgoers. “The cleansing he wants to carry out using his reputation and public status will hurt many people’s reputations and, what’s more, their connections, their finances, their long-term alliances with bureaucrats and law enforcers, who knew…
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…s in some on-line LDS communities winkingly call it “Kremlinology.” (Not that the LDS Church is, well, the Soviet regime.) But a Church that prizes the opacity of its inner workings is experiencing an unusual level of uninvited transparency. And there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. Information wants to be free. Stories want to travel. And our Mormon faith teaches us that over time, at the intersection of multiple processes human and…
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…rary American fundamentalism, from its pre-millennial dispensationalist eschatology to its free-market economic ideology is at odds with the actual ideology of American Puritanism. The reductionist ‘culture wars’ obscure the nuances of history and culture, while failing to recognize the full complexity of both secularism and religion. This year’s tempest in a coffee cup has provided us all with an unintended lesson in semiotics. That someone might…
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…e already lost,” says Robinson. But “if I tell you what is truest for me, what is in my heart, that is very disarming.” But reaching hearts does not always change votes. The film captures the voice of one woman at the General Convention choking with emotion as she explained how she simply could not overcome her understanding of scripture to support the moves toward full inclusion that were eventually adopted with a bigger margin of victory than su…
Read More…the implication that it “belongs” to them (the owners), and they are thus free to dispense of what is theirs as they see fit. And if it belongs to them, then it is in some sense an extension of them, and thus whatever appears in the compensation packages of workers, such as birth control, affects them. Framed in this way, the argument makes sense. I mean, we’d understand a Quaker grandmother’s reluctance to help her grandson buy an assault rifle…
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…d not actually started the third grade . . . Grown-ups did not understand that summers were free from grades.” She also catches grown-ups speaking earnest nonsense. Virginia Lee Burton’s 1939 classic Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel may be about, as her teacher tells her, “digging the basement of the town hall,” but Ramona knows that her pressing question, namely, “how did Mike Mulligan go to the bathroom when he was digging the basement of the…
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…But it won’t happen until there is a massive shift in understanding about what promotes “security.” Israelis have bought into a worldview about security that predominates in much of the world and is the central principle of American foreign policy: “homeland security can only be achieved by domination, either military, economic or diplomatic, of all those who might be potential adversaries.” It was this strategy of domination that led the United S…
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