Religion Dispatches
“If anyone can look at the way religion has treated and treats women and not be pissed off, they have something wrong with them. So, yes, I intend on pissing off every misogynist homophobic religious conservative and/or empire-building neo-conservative imperialist supporter of our permanent war economy stuck in the ideological straightjacket that I used to so proudly wear.”
Read More
I think some outsiders still think American Judaism is divided into Reform, Conservative Orthodox. In recent decades, it has become much more pluralistic, with several additional groups that could be seen as fledgling denominations and many others that are floating somewhere between institutional categories. On the other hand, some insiders believe that the American Jewish religious denominational structure has collapsed.
Read More
This is a world in which all the dials are turned up to 11—there’s more risk, more conflict, more drama. It’s a world where a few men have over 100 children apiece. One guy has over 250. Drab or dismal it’s not.
Read More
“It was what I found in the archives that inspired me to write the book—Craddock’s unpublished book manuscripts on everything from ancient sex worship to contemporary marriage reform. And then there was her journal of mystical experiences—a diary so baffling and intense in its combination of spiritualism and sexuality as to demand attention.”
Read More
Sadly, there is still a fair amount of ignorance and bigotry toward black non-believers in African American communities due to the stereotype that atheists are immoral, rudderless, and not authentically black. This belief is especially insidious for black women. Mainstream African American culture places a high premium on black female caregiving, piety, and sacrifice. The patriarchal traditions of the Black Church, with their emphasis on charismatic black male leadership and biblical literalism, play a key role in socializing black women to be subservient and self-sacrificing.
Read More
What inspired you to write A House for Hope? What sparked your interest?
As lifelong progressive people of faith, we are tired of religion getting a bad rap because religious fundamentalists and right-wingers lend the power of religion to support unholy causes. We disagree with their…
Read More
“I felt as if I had stumbled into a parallel universe, an alternate history of the Middle Ages that had been perfectly crafted for me: For most of my career, I have worked as a science writer, but my heart had first been captured by medieval sagas. The story of The Scientist Pope—one scholar called him ‘the Bill Gates of the end of the first millennium’—was a story I needed to tell.”
Read More
I’d always considered myself a rationalist, but over the next twelve months a series of odd events would challenge the way I viewed the world. Many people suggested I write a book about my experiences, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that for the simple reason that if you tell someone, especially a stranger, that you might have a ghost in your house, the probability of that person thinking you’re crazy is rather high.
Read More
The political types, both right and left, have managed to create the idea that the sixties were a time of leftist, collectivist politics. But this was actually an era of mad individualism, not collectivism, of romantic essentialism, not social construction. The old lefties failed in their every effort to organize… and a lot of old hippies are Ron Paul types today.
Read More
10 questions for the author of a new satire of American Christianity.