Tag: atheists

Daily Links: Grand Jury Duty Blues

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I’m three weeks down, one to go.  Serving justice in Brooklyn has kept me quiet, but here’s what I’m reading between testimonials:

Jane Iwamura at The Scoop on Tupac’s undead appearance at Coachella.

One wonders if Mark Oppenheimer just didn’t have any critical thinking to apply to his recent review of Ross Douthat’s new book, Bad Religion, or if the NYT editors just sliced it right out for the sake of their home-base columnist.  (Regardless, I send a shout-out to one beat man who knows what real bad religion means, Pete Finestone.  Hey Stone, wanna write a review for us?  Word.)

Ahem!  Mennonites are exploring their “martyr complex,” a trait “many Mennonites carry—especially ethnic German and Swiss Mennonites—and the consequences of that mindset.”

Remember when Sojourners backed away from the gays?  Becky Garrison does.  It was a true grit moment, one the “faith in action for social justice” magazine sadly failed to pass, a turning point in our desire to like Sojourners for all their ramble, an end to our guilt for never really getting Jim Wallis’ swagger.

New crits on the religion chopping block.  Religion & Politics launched this week.

The Grand Mufti of the Republic of Tatarstan recounts his version of the past year.

Church artwork is moving to where the devout are; from Europe to Latin America, Africa and Asia.

What do atheist billboards do?

Fredrick Clarkson writes at Women’s ENews about the latest doings of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. Continue Reading →

Atheists' Public Sphere

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Angela Zito: Greta Christina gives us a list of the ten worst states to be an atheist. It’s really a list of: “Ten Worst States to Declare Publicly That You’re an Atheist.” A lot of the anger is actually about atheists daring to claim some part of the public discourse for their set of beliefs, be it parading on Veterans Day in Pennsylvania, putting up billboards announcing the existence of atheists, forming a high school group, running for office as an atheist, or objecting aloud to Christian media like banners in the work or school place. In short, it’s about contesting media monopoly for a narrow range of religious discussion and practice. To be sure, these fights are about theological nicety and content, but they are just as much about the power to speak out–which bleeds directly into political life, into questions of who owns the public sphere and who gets to dispose of public resources. Then it feels like “religion” carries, while hiding, a great weight of social responsibility and political power in its agenda-bag. Ouch? Oh, but it actually does, always, and here is where we find the proof. Continue Reading →

Atheists’ Public Sphere

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Angela Zito: Greta Christina gives us a list of the ten worst states to be an atheist. It’s really a list of: “Ten Worst States to Declare Publicly That You’re an Atheist.” A lot of the anger is actually about atheists daring to claim some part of the public discourse for their set of beliefs, be it parading on Veterans Day in Pennsylvania, putting up billboards announcing the existence of atheists, forming a high school group, running for office as an atheist, or objecting aloud to Christian media like banners in the work or school place. In short, it’s about contesting media monopoly for a narrow range of religious discussion and practice. To be sure, these fights are about theological nicety and content, but they are just as much about the power to speak out–which bleeds directly into political life, into questions of who owns the public sphere and who gets to dispose of public resources. Then it feels like “religion” carries, while hiding, a great weight of social responsibility and political power in its agenda-bag. Ouch? Oh, but it actually does, always, and here is where we find the proof. Continue Reading →

Atheists’ Public Sphere

Posted on by

Angela Zito: Greta Christina gives us a list of the ten worst states to be an atheist. It’s really a list of: “Ten Worst States to Declare Publicly That You’re an Atheist.” A lot of the anger is actually about atheists daring to claim some part of the public discourse for their set of beliefs, be it parading on Veterans Day in Pennsylvania, putting up billboards announcing the existence of atheists, forming a high school group, running for office as an atheist, or objecting aloud to Christian media like banners in the work or school place. In short, it’s about contesting media monopoly for a narrow range of religious discussion and practice. To be sure, these fights are about theological nicety and content, but they are just as much about the power to speak out–which bleeds directly into political life, into questions of who owns the public sphere and who gets to dispose of public resources. Then it feels like “religion” carries, while hiding, a great weight of social responsibility and political power in its agenda-bag. Ouch? Oh, but it actually does, always, and here is where we find the proof. Continue Reading →

Take America Back to What? The Founding Atheists?

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For all of the — rather successful — efforts over the past decades to convince the nation that our founders were holy men devoted to keeping God as our national co-pilot (Beck is only the most recent in a long line ahistorical claimers), sometimes Christians have to call it the way they see it. Christian J. Pinto, a documentary filmmaker, isn’t out to give a glorified shine to the constitution-writers. He wants to move America forward to a new faithfulness, not back to those “athiests” who got us started.  In his new film, “The Hidden Faith of the Founding Fathers,”  Pinto says that Christians could find better role models than the likes of Jefferson, Washington, and Adams.  So who were the Founding Father’s appealing to when they wrote the constitution, if not God?  Ultimately Rome, says Pinto, as a means of escaping British rule. Continue Reading →

What Makes Ground Zero Holy?

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We’ve been wondering what makes the site of the 9/11 attacks “holy ground.”  Michael Daly takes this saccharine stab at it in today’s New York Daily News by asserting that tragedy (or seeing shells from foxholes) makes all of us pray in the same way:

Ground Zero is a mosque.  It is also a church and a synagogue and a temple and an ashram on ground made holy by those of all faiths who died there.

Continue Reading →

What Would Jefferson Do?

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Journalist and director of USC’s Annenberg Digital News, Marc Cooper, makes a case in today’s LA Times for the next Supreme Court Justice to be an atheist. How about some representation for the 1 in 6 Americans who claim no faith? he asks. Alas, even those tangentially following the Obama administration’s hob-knobs with religious groups would know how radical Cooper sounds. Continue Reading →