Religion Dispatches
…who’s to say that it’s really more far-fetched than a big invisible man in the sky? But then reality kicks in. Proto-religion didn’t account for everything. That’s when scholars and theologians alike must seek the spirit of their texts to pronounce new judgments. If the day comes when I need an organ and getting one from a pig is my best bet, I’ll gladly take it. But I also like bacon, so take that as you will….
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…interest in transdisciplinary conversations. Perhaps theologians, pastors, spiritual leaders, people who are spiritually attuned to irreligious forms of creativity, will find some new ways to communicate about these things. But if science is left out of the mix, we will always be off in lala land. We need the incarnational practice of taking into account the most precise knowledge we can find, in the face of the mystery of our embodied existence….
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…a Protestant, a Catholic, and a Jew—going off to war and dying in the same spirit. Then Schultz shows how, in the early Cold War era, tri-faith America helped the nation stand against the monster of atheistic Communism. Although less interested in “Judeo-Christian” values as a theological concept and more invested in its civic morality, groups like the Advertising Council championed Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish brotherhood for the good of the…
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…e a special duty today to be the guardians of the truth about the American spirit and our national identity.” In fact, Archbishop Gomez argues, immigrant Catholics “without proper documentation,” who share the values of “faith, family, and community” are “the key to American renewal.” Yes, Archbishop Gomez is arguing that unauthorized immigrants not only deserve the chance to adjust their status to live legally in the United States, but also hold…
Read More…that Catholics across the country have apparently paid closer attention to spirit of the Holy Father’s words than have church leaders. Polling released by the Pew Research Center last week showed a dramatic increase in Catholic support for marriage equality in the United States, with a jump from 34% in 2004, when the Michigan amendment was approved, to 59% today. For pity’s sake, even most young Republicans now favor marriage equality. As Mary E….
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…ns, and academics charged the battle lines of public discourse in the best spirit of humanism to show that Islam, like all other religions, was at its core a force of good in the world corrupted by the ill-conceived actions of a few. When opportunist authors and their presses released their provocations, Muslims and non-Muslim liberals launched their own visions of what Islam truly is. As universities around the country cut back hiring, department…
Read More…the State of the Union with the words: “I wasn’t going to get up, but the Spirit just carried me up here.” Mitt is so Mormon his campaign biography begins, “I, Willard, having been born of goodly parents.” Mitt is so Mormon, he will ask members of Congress to go home and pray about his economic plan. Mitt is so Mormon he’d ask the Elders Quorum to move him into the White House. Mitt Romney is so Mormon that his first act will be to make July 24 a…
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…on. Since the 1970s, Americans have witnessed the increasingly retributive spirit of this country’s prisons. It was imperative to show that while there have always been debates about reformation and retribution, the current environment is an historical anomaly. For people who had any knowledge of prison history, I wanted to deal with some false notions about Quakers and Calvinists. Some scholars have posited accounts of the early prisons in which…
Read More…the deep, structural racism and the collusion with the CIA to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of federal and local laws, they relish in lying to the public. In the face of months of AP reports that the NYPD has been engaged in spying, they deny it, simply stating that AP is wrong, offering no proof of their innocence or rebuttals. Then their claim was that Third Jihad was only shown a couple of times and that Police Commissioner Raymond Ke…
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…ell. The emotive response of guilt remains long after the mind, heart, and spirit have all reconciled themselves to the reality of sexual expression, and of love. Honest and nourishing sexual expression brings us to love, to truth, to holiness. Guilt knows none of this. Moreover, guilt is a conditioned phenomenon like everything else. It isn’t a still-small voice; it’s mechanistic. It’s a meme, installed by years of repetition, that has no particu…
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