Religion Dispatches
…tive sense that another checklist of items would just perpetuate the wrong way of thinking, the wrong way of being. We don’t need another line, the protests seem to be saying. The kind of change we want is deeper. So, sorry, incrementalists like Jay Michaelson, we’re not going to get practical or endorse a political program. We’re going to do this deeper form of protest, because it’s a deeper kind of problem we’re up against. Sometimes this last p…
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…d the editor of The Cosmopolitan Lyceum. It was, “the information superhighway of the 1840s and ’50s.” Today, TED differs from the lyceum circuit in a few key ways. TED talks are mostly consumed on a screen, and while TED has a circuit of local events (the TEDx program), talks are one-off experiences. Plus, they’re capped at eighteen minutes while Lyceum lectures were a little longer. “They’d happily listen to someone talk about Napoleon for an ho…
Read More…her than to try in Arabic, is that it marks me as ‘other,’ but in a useful way. Plus, people like to use their English because it also marks them in that situation. I find someone who speaks English and takes my receipt, then walks away. And this leads to the same question, where am I from? But he takes passport receipt and walks into the room. I start to feel hopeful, but after a few minutes he returns and says, not yet. You have to wait. Still,…
Read More…he 45th president—driving him from office by any means necessary—opens the way to our national salvation. This way of thinking is wrong and profoundly dangerous. It’s akin to thinking that if we can only silence the likes of Steve King, we will have disposed of the problem of white supremacy. Those who take this approach have fallen into what I call “The Antichrist Trap.” This obviously needs some explaining. The kind of ethical monotheism that at…
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…r with a lot of controversies surrounding monuments. I’m interested in the way monuments are used to inscribe particular histories and ideas of polity onto the land. I’m also interested in the way rituals are used to construct and change those meanings. The connection between ritual, sacred space, and narrative runs through a lot of my work. In my next book I plan to look at some of the controversies surrounding monuments in America in order to ex…
Read More…nd of openly gay lawmakers who are using their personal stories to try to sway laws in favor of marriage equality. Rep. Mell was successful in her push to get civil unions recognized in her state. Right now, there are 85 openly gay or lesbian legislators around the country. That’s a small percentage of the more than 7,300 lawmakers out there, but their outspokenness about how inequality in marriage laws are affecting their families appears to be m…
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…tates history. The Board owns and controls the SAT, so what it proposes by way of the teaching curriculum obviously matters. Fox News has trumpeted this as a victory for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. And really, who can blame them? It’s a big win for their side in the battle of ideas, despite claims by the College Board and by some cowed centrist historians to the effect that the new framework actually represents a more “balanced” appro…
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…that all evangelicals are comfortable with this, but many of them are. One way to look at this is to observe that evangelicals have always prioritized certain social issues over others, and race has never been one of their priorities. Abortion, they would argue, transcends race. People of all races have abortions and “kill babies.” Traditional marriage, similarly, is an institution that transcends race. I think such a view goes back to one of the…
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…e rolling tide What did you want it to be? You say it’s him or it’s me The way you made it That’s the way it will be Still, the religious imagery brings hope, for the prophets may be gone, but they’re not forgotten, be they biblical characters, family members, or aspirants to be the next Elvis. From her first single “Orphan Girl,” which expresses the ache from lacking any “ties of kinship” but finds comfort that heaven will provide her with the fa…
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…n if a ban is the expedient thing to do, it feeds the paranoia in too many ways. Perhaps at this point the only way forward that respects the demands of liberal democracy and pluralism and doesn’t give Putin more fodder for his propaganda blitz are safeguards that fall short of a ban. We actually do have a model for this in the involvement of security forces with mosques in the early 2000s. To be clear, some of these efforts went very wrong, hinde…
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