Religion Dispatches
…hey work hard and don’t always get a lot in return. Like the urban working-class people I ministered to in Pennsylvania, there are many residents of small towns and rural areas who feel left behind, alienated from and screwed over by the financialized economy that sees them only as assets and liabilities. They are afraid of what will come next for themselves and their communities, constrained by memories of what used to be, and frustrated by their…
Read More
…Cherubim at the top, Principalities and Archangels constituting the middle class, and Guardian Angels as the working class of angels. France has considerable fun with this social ranking by having members of the angelic bourgeoisie (the Archangels) foment political revolution in heaven with methods taken straight out of the anarchist playbook, while the revolution’s foot-soldiers are depicted as angelic lumpenproletariat (literally so, as Maurice…
Read More
…ch of anything. A group of white women chanting Hindu sutras in a hot yoga class is not spirituality: it’s an exercise class with a Sanskrit soundtrack. Spirituality, in that and too many other contexts to enumerate, is a marketing tool. And marketing-savvy younger adults are beginning to recognize and reject it. Hokey “young adult” ministries, clunky social media, static notions about gender, deeply skewed perceptions of sexuality, out-of-touch c…
Read More
…2 I’m claiming to have made up this game, but if you’ve ever showed up for class without having really done the reading—and I’ve taught long enough to know some of you must have—you’ve probably played it before. Here are the rules: I opened the book and looked at the introduction. Kind of. I definitely read the whole table of contents. I wrote down a few questions I could ask without actually engaging most of the text, because—and I cannot stress…
Read More
…on Thursday a bill arrived on Brewer’s desk that would ban ethnic studies classes in schools. According to the bill’s language, schools that promote “the overthrow of the US government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group, or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals,” are at risk of losing state funding. In addition, the Arizona Boa…
Read More…. They may get up for work or class or an appointment but only for work or class or an appointment, and when these do not force them to get up, they sleep in. Even if they have one of those kind of five-days-a-week schedules that forces them up, it never becomes the norm; but is always an abnormal necessity. Therefore on the weekends, they stay in bed asleep for as long as they feel normal. Non-suhur people do not eat in the morning anyway. Maybe…
Read More
…out. Are your students moving away from traditional religion? I just had a class, and it was fascinating. The class was diverse, but they were unanimous in their anger at theodicies because theodicies had been spoken to them in a time when they just did not satisfy. A real concern my students have is the hypocrisy of Christianity. A lot of my students are gay, and they don’t feel like they can be themselves. They resonate with parts of my book bec…
Read More
…ve argued, the 1960s cultural revolution brought these elite values to the American middle classes. As a consequence, a baby boom “generation of seekers” turned from institutional religion to self-reliant, individually directed paths to wholeness and to the divine. Therapy and self-help aided the journey, of course, and not a few critics have worried that the American republic was degenerating into a nation of narcissists. Celebrating the Open Roa…
Read More…te has been shaped across philosophical, ideological, political religious, class, and caste lines, in which sides that have competing interests occasionally join forces or those with similar goals find themselves as enemies. The story begins in the final years of the Indian independence movement, when the divisions among some Indian nationalist groups—particularly within the left—grew into open conflict. In 1946, a Communist-backed revolt of peasa…
Read More…Freedom” bills, which paves the way for sneaking creationism into science class. While lawmakers have denied the law has anything to do with inserting creationism into science class, I’ve written about how members of Louisiana school boards interpret the law here. Admittedly, Kopplin and other supporters of the Constitution in Louisiana have an uphill battle. Only three members of the House voted against the original law. State Senator Karen Cart…
Read More