In the News: Clip-clippety-clip
A round-up of recent religion news. Continue Reading →
Tag: civil rights
In the News: What Happened & What Now?
A round-up of recent religion news.
Continue Reading →
The Patient Body: Phyllis Schlafly’s Urology
“The Patient Body” is a monthly column by Ann Neumann about issues at the intersection of religion and medicine. This month: Bathrooms, civil rights legislation, and holding it. Continue Reading →
Making Time: Religion & Black Prison Organizing, with Hakim ‘Ali
Laura McTighe interviews Hakim ‘Ali about religion, incarceration & black prison organizing in Baltimore, 1972-1978.
To Take Place and Have a Place: On Religion, White Supremacy & the People’s Movement in Ferguson
This is the first in a series of articles that Laura McTighe will be writing for The Revealer over the next year about issues at the intersection of race and religion. Continue Reading →
The Patient Body: A Closely-Held Business
“The Patient Body” is a monthly column by Ann Neumann about issues at the intersection of religion and medicine. Continue Reading →
Hollywood's Magical Negroes
An excerpt from Roxane Gay’s “The Solace of Preparing Fried Foods and Other Quaint Remembrances from 1960s Mississippi: Thoughts on The Help,” at The Rumpus:
Hollywood has long been enamored with the magical negro—the insertion of a black character into a narrative who bestows upon the protagonist the wisdom they need to move forward in some way or as Matthew Hughey defines the phenomenon in a 2009 article in Social Problems, “The [magical negro] has become a stock character that often appears as a lower class, uneducated black person who possesses supernatural or magical powers. These powers are used to save and transform disheveled, uncultured, lost, or broken whites (almost exclusively white men) into competent, successful, and content people within the context of the American myth of redemption and salvation.” (see: Ghost, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Unbreakable, Robin Hood (1991), The Secret Life of Bees, Sex and the City, The Green Mile, Corinna, Corinna etc.) Continue Reading →
Hollywood’s Magical Negroes
An excerpt from Roxane Gay’s “The Solace of Preparing Fried Foods and Other Quaint Remembrances from 1960s Mississippi: Thoughts on The Help,” at The Rumpus:
Hollywood has long been enamored with the magical negro—the insertion of a black character into a narrative who bestows upon the protagonist the wisdom they need to move forward in some way or as Matthew Hughey defines the phenomenon in a 2009 article in Social Problems, “The [magical negro] has become a stock character that often appears as a lower class, uneducated black person who possesses supernatural or magical powers. These powers are used to save and transform disheveled, uncultured, lost, or broken whites (almost exclusively white men) into competent, successful, and content people within the context of the American myth of redemption and salvation.” (see: Ghost, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Unbreakable, Robin Hood (1991), The Secret Life of Bees, Sex and the City, The Green Mile, Corinna, Corinna etc.) Continue Reading →
Applying Liberation Theology to theArgument for Gay Marriage
Amy Levin: Last Wednesday, June 15th, something historic happened…for the fourth time. The New York assembly approved the same-sex marriage bill, known as The Marriage Equality Act, which spearheaded a hopeful telos to allow same-sex couples to enjoy benefits and protections of marriage under state law. The New York Senate currently has 31 backers of the bill, including two Republicans, and is waiting for one more to pass the bill. Publicity of the bill has awoken a slumber of supporters and opponents alike, as many realize that among the five states that allow same-sex marriage, New York is by far the most populated, and hence, the most consequential for social change.
As long as we’re making history, it can’t hurt to be cautious of what is at stake when we narrate our steps to marriage equality in America. While opponents of same-sex marriage often fall under the categories of religious, conservative, Christian, and/or Republican, we should be careful not to turn a potential victory of marriage equality into a victory of secular liberalism over religious conservativism. To help delineate why, the work of political scientist Melissa Harris-Perry is quite useful. Featured in last month’s essay by Peter Montgomery at Religion Disptaches, Harris-Perry believes that “LGBT Advocates Need Public Progressive Faith.” Continue Reading →
Pathologizing the Sexual Revolution
Part of The Revealer’s series on the John Jay report, “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010.”
by Peter Bebergal
The Sixties counterculture beleaguered most traditional religious communities. Not only was there an increase in behavior deemed inappropriate (drug use, promiscuous sex, and the generalized spread of anti-establishment ideas), there was what came to be seen as a distracting interest in non-Western, non-traditional spiritual philosophy and practices. Compounding this was the insistence by many young people that psychedelic drugs were a profound catalyst for helping them to break free of what they saw as dusty and dried out teachings spouted by clergy who had no understanding of the injustices of a country torn apart by war, racism, sexism, and homophobia.
It’s no surprise then that the recent report on the “causes and context” of sex abuse in the Catholic Church claims that one factor was the prevalence of counterculture values that peaked in the mid- to late-Sixties, characterized in the popular consciousness of hirsute young people taking drugs, having sex, and otherwise dropping out of society in pursuit of a naive belief in a cosmic utopia. This stereotype would ultimately reduce the Sixties counterculture, an extremely complex and diverse movement, to a kind of youthful pathology, or simply, deviance. As the report says: “The rise in abuse cases in the 1960s and 1970s was influenced by social factors in American society generally.” Continue Reading →