Would Gandhi Disband Occupy?
The Times managed to find a Gandhi scholar who would argue that the greatest hero of radical resistance would endorse the critics of Occupy Wall Street.
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Errol Morris’ Tabloid Sensationalizes Mormonism and ‘Cult’ Deprogramming
After treating the Vietnam War and the torture images of Abu Ghraib in his most recent films, Oscar-winning documentary maker Errol Morris turns to a 1977 scandal involving North Carolina beauty queen Joyce McKinney in his new documentary Tabloid.
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The Rise and Fall of an American Gang: Religion as Camouflage?
A history of what began as a clique of kids on the street, developed into a disciplined organization that reordered the nature of gang relations in Chicago (inaugurating the alliances of various gangs under the umbrella “People” and “Folk” labels), and was reinvented by its “Chief” as first a Moorish Science and then an Islamic religious organization; all the while running a variety of criminal enterprises, culminating in negotiations with the Libyan government with the hopes of being paid in exchange for unleashing certain amount of targeted violence in Chicago. There’s a series of huge stories here, and this book—while certainly the best resource on the subject—is hurt by the sheer range of material it has to address.
A Better Form of Atheism: Rescuing the Christian Tradition from Religion
“If I were to think of a use that I would want my book to be put to, it’s to try to provide for anti-capitalist Christians a more theologically robust response to that kind of thing, something that goes beyond proof-texting and presents a more convincing theological argument.”
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Narco-Violence and the Failure of the Church in Mexico
The mood in Cuernavaca was subdued this week after four decapitated bodies were discovered, hung from their feet from an overpass in yet another set of drug-related assassinations. Turf-battles between rival drug cartels have plagued the once-tranquil “city of eternal spring” since…
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AIPAC and the Israel Lobby: A Graphic Retrospective
How did AIPAC come about? How influential is it? How does it exert force on our lawmakers? All this and more in a short journalistic comic. Includes bonus comic on lobbying.
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Leper Messiah: A Jesus Freak’s Search for the Meaning of Bowie—A Critical Novella
In this special series Dery uses his spiritual crisis, as a born-again teen torn between his conservative faith and his obsession with David Bowie, to explore the historical connections linking religious zealotry and rabid fandom.
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Modern Vampires: Your Neighbors and Spouses
In studying the world of vampires, a young religion scholar is courted by MTV, forced to reckon with subtle energy (“psi”), and confronts the concerns of journalists who recall the disappearance of a colleague at work on a vampire story.
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The Mystic in the Rye: JD Salinger’s Religious Fiction
The one thing that seems able to tame even a hardened cynic like Holden Caufield, in the least overtly religious Salinger book, is an encounter with the innocence of childhood; especially children at play. It is this quest for lost innocence that defines the spiritual trajectory of Salinger’s most memorable characters. They are all teachers, parents, players, children-at-heart.
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The Myth of ‘Voodoo’: A Caribbean American Response to Representations of Haiti
Notwithstanding Haiti’s Christian character, the Haitian personality, if there is one, has been nurtured by a Vodou civilization that any responsible treatment of the subject must disentangle from the Western world’s manufactured “voodoo” culture.
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