Tag: ritual

Religion Doesn't Always Work for Mammon

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Ruben Sanchez: Religion Clause recently informed us of a court ruling that states that the United Postal Service (USPS) does not need to accommodate a Seventh Day Adventist employee’s request to have every Saturday off. The 8th Circuit held that if Saturday leave were granted, such a demand, made under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, would impose an undue hardship on the company, violate its collective bargaining agreement, or challenge its seniority system.” Continue Reading →

Religion Doesn’t Always Work for Mammon

Posted on by

Ruben Sanchez: Religion Clause recently informed us of a court ruling that states that the United Postal Service (USPS) does not need to accommodate a Seventh Day Adventist employee’s request to have every Saturday off. The 8th Circuit held that if Saturday leave were granted, such a demand, made under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, would impose an undue hardship on the company, violate its collective bargaining agreement, or challenge its seniority system.” Continue Reading →

Religion Doesn’t Always Work for Mammon

Posted on by

Ruben Sanchez: Religion Clause recently informed us of a court ruling that states that the United Postal Service (USPS) does not need to accommodate a Seventh Day Adventist employee’s request to have every Saturday off. The 8th Circuit held that if Saturday leave were granted, such a demand, made under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, would impose an undue hardship on the company, violate its collective bargaining agreement, or challenge its seniority system.” Continue Reading →

The Duty of Ritual Obeisance

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From Lewis Lapham’s introduction to the Celebrity issue of Latham’s Quarterly (Winter 2011, p. 16):

In place of the gods who once commanded the heights of Mount Olympus, the media present a repertory company of animated tropes enthroned on a never-ending talk show, anointed with the oil of sweet celebrity, disgorging showers of gold.  It doesn’t matter that they say nothing of interest or consequence.  Neither did Aphrodite or Zeus.  Celebrity is about being, not becoming.  Once possessed of the sovereign power to find a buyer, all celebrity is royal.  The images of wealth and power demand nothing of their votaries other than the duty of ritual obeisance.  The will to learn gives way to a being in the know, which is the instant recognition of the thousands of logos encountered in the course of the day’s shopping and an evening’s programming.

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Adapting Ritual.

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Meera Subramanian, senior editor at our sister site Killing the Buddha, has an article in today’s Wall Street Journal on the crisis Parsis now face with the extinction of vultures; since the time of Herodotus, they have relied on these birds to dispose of their dead. Subramanian writes:

In the earthly realm of humans, Parsis also believe in the ritual purity of fire, soil and water, elements that shouldn’t be sullied by pollution from a defiling corpse. So while virtually all other cultures dispose of their dead by burial or cremation, Parsis have followed a more unusual method. Yet after millennia, that method now has been called into question, forcing a crisis of faith whose only answer is adaptation.

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