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Tag: abby ohlheiser
Apostasy in Any Other Country
Abby Ohlheiser: Something we’re keeping an eye on: Christian Iranian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who faces death for the crime of apostasy, could face execution any time after Wednesday should he refuse to renounce his faith a fourth time.
It’s an interesting case with a bit more to say than the familiar narrative of persecuted Christianity, partially because pastor Nadarkhani’s apostasy might not even be that, according to Iranian law. Continue Reading →
Pictures at an Exhibition
By Abby Ohlheiser
Photos by Merel van Beeren
“Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and the Hartmanns perish??” –Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky
I was sitting in a French-style chain cafe (sorry America), finishing my croissant, talking to Merel, when we heard the opening notes of “The Star Spangled Banner.” It was a restrained, beautiful choral rendition, and we listened. It was all kind of a relief: we were just blocks from Ground Zero, at around 8:30 AM on the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001, but the only signs we’d seen of something solemn going on were the expressions on the cops’ faces as they watched us leave the subway at Fulton Street, as they told us to keep walking in a no-gawking zone, as they told confused spectators no, not that crosswalk, you have to go around the block. This moment, listening, would be the closest we would get to the ceremony at the memorial plaza finally established on top of the former World Trade Center site. Instead, we spent the day in the blocks around the site, in the throngs of tourists, New Yorkers, missionaries, and protestors. We watched as a block’s worth of people waited to move one block forward, in front of St. Paul’s. Merel said, “I wonder what this would look like as painted by Norman Rockwell.”
Here is what I, and the rest of the crowd, saw on the outskirts of Ground Zero during the ceremony, on the other side of the police checkpoints and “you can’t go theres” between us and the heartbreaking, mourning substance of the official ceremony. Continue Reading →
Dominionism: One More Response Response
Abby Ohlheiser: If the Book of Mormon and Romney’s early campaign were a Mormon Moment, the past few weeks have been something of a “Dominionism” moment. Dominionism, a generalized term for a collection of Charismatic Christian movements that treat the structure and power of civil government, media, and other significant institutions as mission field, is a key part of reporting that understands the Religious Right (which, of course, is not synonymous with Evangelical Christians). Sarah Posner’s most recent piece on it is at Salon today. It’s part of Ryan Lizza’s profile of Michelle Bachmann, and of a substantial portion of the coverage of Rick Perry’s The Response, which I attended earlier this month. Continue Reading →
Safe Words
Abby Ohlheiser: All the religious language of the last fortnight’s Perry and Ames fest ’11 (or should that be ’12) made me click on this tweet (despite the parenthetical clue) without thinking for a second that it would be a comment on anything other than something Bachmann or Perry have talked about recently. By the way: don’t google “perry bondage.”
It was, in fact, an article about the sort of bondage with a bigger but quieter internet presence: BDSM, which stands for bondage, discipline, sado-masochisim. Continue Reading →
Who You Calling a Terrorist?
In Peter King’s world, the battle has only two sides and only one winning strategy.
by Amy Levin and Abby Ohlheiser
Lately media outlets have been telling us what Americans believe, from how much we think we should be taxed, to how much we like Muslims. Even how (much) we believe in God. What Pew or Gallup haven’t capitalized on yet is Americans’ obsession with terrorism. How many of us believe in it—as a great danger to society, for instance—or how do we collectively define it—say, as a feature of particular world regions or cultures? Not unlike past eras when Americans developed their own definitions of Marxist, Communist, fascist, or anarchist (not anything good, mind you), in our current era we confidently call individuals with non-conformist, “subversive” ideologies “terrorist.” Sure, there is a technical definition for the word, but like any of the above descriptions, the more we use terrorist, the more obscure its meanings become. Why are certain political institutions reconstructing the definition of terrorism? Which forms of power succeed in remolding the word’s transformation? What are the implications of invoking terrorist discourse?
Steering the bandwagon on exposure of terrorist threats, Rep. Peter King (R-NY3) is but one of the the media’s returning bedfellows on the fear-trafficking topic of homeland security. Like any politician’s platform, there’s more to King’s efforts than meets the eye. Given the context–-the killings in Oslo by suspect Anders Breivik–of last Wednesday’s third round of hearings on Muslim radicalization it is perhaps not surprising that much of the time was spent discussing things other than the stated topic of the day, the threat of Al Shabaab in the US. Continue Reading →
Family Dissonance
Abby Ohlheiser: A couple years ago, in a small Christian-owned performance space-cum-vintage shop, I listened to David Bazan finish a song, pause, and ask, “anyone have any questions for me?”
Bazan, who was touring with songs from his album about lost faith, Curse Your Branches, fielded earnest theological questions from the young fans sitting cross legged right up close to the stage. He’d play a few songs, some from the album, some from his old band Pedro The Lion (a mid-2000’s crossover Christian/indie music darling), pause for questions, then keep going.
Earlier this summer, he released a new album. Continue Reading →
Fans of Action: How Harry Potter Inspired a New Generation of Activists
by Abby Ohlheiser
Weeks after the earthquake in January, 2010, five planes, filled with medical supplies, flew to Haiti. One plane was named DFTBA, which stands for Don’t Forget To Be Awesome, an acronym popularized by the nerdfighters. The other four were named Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Dumbledore, after the most familiar and beloved characters from the Harry Potter series. Partners In Health chartered the planes with $123,000 dollars raised by a group called the Harry Potter Alliance.
Perhaps best known for its ubiquitous fan fiction, Wizard Rock bands, and for titillating bookstore owners everywhere with the promise of a packed house on book launch nights, the Harry Potter fan community (also called a “fandom”) is often discussed as it exists in isolation from the “real world,” or as consumers of a widely-hyped, money-making franchise. But the books have now all been written and the last film came out this month. With the exception of a Harry Potter theme park in Orlando, it would seem the franchise is all out of new ways to engage its audience. That’s where the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) comes in.
The non-profit, founded in 2005 to channel the Harry Potter fandom energy and resources into charitable work, uses parallels to the book series to build support for a broad range of causes, connections that range from direct to oblique. One example: The HPA works for LGBT equality, and has cited the “in the closet” hidden identities of Hagrid the half-giant, Lupin the werewolf, and the protagonist Harry Potter himself, who was forced to literally live in a closet for most of his early childhood. Continue Reading →
Media’s Muslim v. Christian Paradigm
Abby Ohlheiser: The State Department has weighed in on the case of Iranian Christian pastor, Youcef Nadarkhani, who was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to death for apostasy. He’d be the first executed for that reason in Iran since 1990. But this month, the Iranian Supreme Court offered him a way out: they’ve overturned the death penalty sentence, sent the case back to a lower court, and asked the pastor to repent. The interesting part of the story is how Nadarkhani’s case has become part of an international game of chicken for power. Continue Reading →
Media's Muslim v. Christian Paradigm
Abby Ohlheiser: The State Department has weighed in on the case of Iranian Christian pastor, Youcef Nadarkhani, who was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to death for apostasy. He’d be the first executed for that reason in Iran since 1990. But this month, the Iranian Supreme Court offered him a way out: they’ve overturned the death penalty sentence, sent the case back to a lower court, and asked the pastor to repent. The interesting part of the story is how Nadarkhani’s case has become part of an international game of chicken for power. Continue Reading →