Religion Dispatches
Histories of war and the military are often written as if war were a completely areligious practice. We have occasional stories of exceptionally devout generals (or presidents) and aphorisms about atheists and foxholes, but few historians seem interested in weaving religion into narratives of American war-craft whether as a way of thinking about decisions to enter war…
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One perspective that new atheists and liberal multiculturalists share is that the religions are essentially the same (false and poisonous on the one hand, and true and beautiful on the other). I think this view is dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue.
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The popular term “spiritual but not religious” only goes so far in describing an event like this. I think Burning Man shows us the enduring importance of ritual as a vehicle through which humans connect with one another and as well as with a mysterious “more,” while also showing us how these expressions are increasingly displaced outside the bounds of the dominant Western cultural concepts of “religion.”
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Both in the first wave of press in 2002 about abuse in the Catholic Church and now during this second wave, we’ve talked very little about girls, and even less about stalking and the other kinds of abuse that people in power, in particular religious authorities, enact on the unsuspecting and the young. While we have a lot of journalists covering the scandal and talking to victims, we have very little in the way of “personal narrative” of what this experience is like. I hope my novel, This Gorgeous Game, and its protagonist’s first-person voice will offer a new perspective on the conversation.
Read MoreOn the Kennedy paradigm, the abortion myth, Johnson’s moral compass, blithe affirmations of faith, and Billy Graham’s hypocrisy…
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Whether or not we believe in evil as a supernatural force it cannot be denied that when we as a culture project the idea of evil outwards, onto others, it gives us license to engage in extreme forms of cruelty—witch-hunting, racism, nationalistic hatred.
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“Taking aim” at both the Religious Right and the New Atheists, a new book aims to make progressive politics safe for the religious, and religion safe for progressive politics.
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Anouar Majid invites us to consider for the possibility of real communication—unscripted, improvisational, unorthodox—among Muslims and non-Muslims in America.
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Laurie Lebo traces the backstory of the pivotal case: a perfect storm of religious intolerance.
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Religious rebellion against the secular state isn’t actually about religion…
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