a review of religion and media
Everybody knows dogs don’t have souls. Nor do atheists. Now that the Rapture is back on for October 21, what could be more humane than having an earthbound atheist adopt your pet after Jesus has ushered you into heaven?
(h/t Adam H. Becker) Continue Reading →
Egyptians’ arguments push us to rethink not only our conventional notions of secularism, but also our assumptions about religious politics.
by Yasmin Moll
The latest Pew Research Center poll results on Egypt are in, as Egyptians continue to debate what form the country’s nascent democracy should take in the wake of the January 25th Revolution. I was one of the millions of Egyptians participating in the 18-day uprising that toppled the Mubarak regime last February. I’m also a graduate student conducting research in Egypt. So for multiple reasons, I hoped the poll would provide concrete answers on what Egyptians think at this critical juncture of our country’s history. But the results of the poll, conducted March 24 to April 7, have left many commentators and analysts more perplexed than reassured. For it appears that while most Egyptians want a democratic polity, they also want a religious one.
Here is how the numbers break down: The vast majority (71%) of the one thousand Egyptians polled feel that democracy is preferable to any other form of government. At the same time, close to two-thirds (62%) said that Egypt’s laws should be derived from the Qur’an, with another quarter (27%) saying that while laws shouldn’t strictly adhere to the Qur’an, they should still be “in accordance with Islamic values and principles.” Continue Reading →
Writes Daniel Burke about the increase of exorcists in the U.S. Catholic Church at U.S. Catholic, “there are more exorcists in the United States now than at any other time in modern history, according to experts. More than 100 bishops and priests met in Baltimore last November to recruit dozens more.” He continues:
As interest in exorcism rises, the church faces a host of tricky questions. Is the rite an outdated remedy best left to history? Or can it be effective alongside modern medical and psychological treatment? And why are bishops—who are leading a church plagued by emptying schools, vanishing vocations, and a sex abuse scandal that won’t go away—investing their limited time and resources to train exorcists?
Jo Piazza: If you have any doubt that Lady Gaga has cultivated both an aura of the sacred and a near cult-like following you weren’t inside the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan last week when the pop star famous for making it perfectly acceptable to dress in raw meat performed for the Robin Hood Foundation’s annual Gala. Continue Reading →
How are ideas of masculinity created and enforced? Are the political and Christian right less tolerant of a spectrum of male behavior than those on the left? What about Boehner’s crying and Obama’s killing? From Amanda Marcotte’s article at The Guardian, “The soft underbelly of the right’s hard abs”:
Unfortunately, the right’s obsession with masculinity, and the fear that if they aren’t constantly shoring it up and attacking the feminine, they might grow soft, has very real effects. Many, maybe most of America’s problems go back to this manlier-than-thou attitude on the right. Wars are started. Women’s basic human rights are denied. Gays are bashed. The main slurs against Democrats are about how they’re feminine, childish or weak for doing things like thinking through important decisions before making them or caring about the environment. Even fights over the budget become masculinity displays, with Paul Ryan casting people who use the social safety net living “lives of complacency and dependency” – all the while, portraying himself as a tough guy with his own hefty workout routine.
Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire, by Jennifer Wright Knust (HarperOne, 2011)
by Natasja Sheriff
If you listen to the rhetoric of the more vocal proponents of conservative Christianity, you would be forgiven for believing that the Bible contains clear instruction on sexual conduct and morality. You might be less inclined to believe that the Good Book is actually full of hidden meaning and innuendo, erotic poetry, extra-marital seduction and love affairs between same-sex couples. Doesn’t the Bible teach that sex is for procreation, sanctioned only within the confines of marriage between two heterosexual adults?
No, says Jennifer Wright Knust, author of Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire. An ordained Baptist minister and religious scholar with a doctorate in Religion from Columbia University, Knust knows what she’s talking about. The Bible, Knust argues, is not a sexual guidebook. It is inconsistent, contradictory, complex and, at times, “patently immoral.” “The Bible does not offer a systematic set of teachings or a single sexual code,” she says, “but it does reveal sometimes conflicting attempts on the part of people and groups to define sexual morality, and to do so in the name of God.” Continue Reading →
Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire, by Jennifer Wright Knust (HarperOne, 2011)
by Natasja Sheriff
If you listen to the rhetoric of the more vocal proponents of conservative Christianity, you would be forgiven for believing that the Bible contains clear instruction on sexual conduct and morality. You might be less inclined to believe that the Good Book is actually full of hidden meaning and innuendo, erotic poetry, extra-marital seduction and love affairs between same-sex couples. Doesn’t the Bible teach that sex is for procreation, sanctioned only within the confines of marriage between two heterosexual adults?
No, says Jennifer Wright Knust, author of Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire. An ordained Baptist minister and religious scholar with a doctorate in Religion from Columbia University, Knust knows what she’s talking about. The Bible, Knust argues, is not a sexual guidebook. It is inconsistent, contradictory, complex and, at times, “patently immoral.” “The Bible does not offer a systematic set of teachings or a single sexual code,” she says, “but it does reveal sometimes conflicting attempts on the part of people and groups to define sexual morality, and to do so in the name of God.” Continue Reading →
Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire, by Jennifer Wright Knust (HarperOne, 2011)
by Natasja Sheriff
If you listen to the rhetoric of the more vocal proponents of conservative Christianity, you would be forgiven for believing that the Bible contains clear instruction on sexual conduct and morality. You might be less inclined to believe that the Good Book is actually full of hidden meaning and innuendo, erotic poetry, extra-marital seduction and love affairs between same-sex couples. Doesn’t the Bible teach that sex is for procreation, sanctioned only within the confines of marriage between two heterosexual adults?
No, says Jennifer Wright Knust, author of Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire. An ordained Baptist minister and religious scholar with a doctorate in Religion from Columbia University, Knust knows what she’s talking about. The Bible, Knust argues, is not a sexual guidebook. It is inconsistent, contradictory, complex and, at times, “patently immoral.” “The Bible does not offer a systematic set of teachings or a single sexual code,” she says, “but it does reveal sometimes conflicting attempts on the part of people and groups to define sexual morality, and to do so in the name of God.” Continue Reading →
Consider these two news bits from last week alongside the continuing denial of Obama’s citizenship: At the Guardian Amy Goodman reported that the death penalty case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther member who’s been in jail for 29 years, was declared unconstitutional. Continue Reading →
Kelly Smurthwaite at ksl.com writes that while prominent news outlets are citing the Mormon faith of two GOP hopefuls, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman Jr., as a potential “weakness,” “prominent politicians and presidents of the United States have spoken in favor of members of the LDS faith, stating the good that members of the church have done in the world, their country, their communities and their homes.” Take John F. Kennedy for instance (who famously received criticism for being Catholic and disavowed any desire to govern like one).
Smurthwaite’s article is quite accurate, of course, if not a bit earnest in it’s effort to give a good account of the unnecessarily persecuted Mormons as upright, good Americans. I would speculate that a majority of Americans would agree, when you get down to it. Funny undergarments, maybe. But hell, they’re pioneers. Just like the rest of us — or perhaps better, if you watch the LDS ad campaign from last year. Continue Reading →