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By Shai Ginsburg
Yoav Shamir's 2009 documentary Defamation is the one must-see film at this years’ San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
This is not to say that it is the most artistically successful of the current festival lineup. Nor is the reason behind this endorsement Defamation's fast-growing reputation, alongside Simone Bitton’s controversial documentary about the late Rachel Corrie, the logically-titled Rachel. Defamation's
notoriety stems from the fact that the documentary takes as its ...
Weekly round up number two—if you want more Winston follow me on twitter—and this week's all about bodies. No surprises here: lots of sex but also stories on higher ed, Methodists and goats.
The goats hail from Fort Worth, where they're central to Jose Merced's practice of Santeria. In 2006, police stopped Merced from sacrificing a goat, and the case has been in litigation ever since. Last week, a federal appeals court ruled that Merced's first amendment rights had been violated—and he would be able to freely practice his faith. (Check out The Wild Hunt for a modern pagan perspective on this). In 1993, the Supreme Court decided in favor of a Santeria priest in Florida whose ritual practice included animal sacrifice—a ruling that Merced's lawyers used as a precedent.
Follow-up: Local sensitivities are more outraged by religious sacrifice than by killing animals for food or sport (both of which can cause the same health risks for which Merced was busted). Will this case end the debate over animal sacrifice and, more importantly, encourage other groups whose religious practices challenge community norms to seek legal protection?A new study on religion and higher education may surprise bicoastal atheist elitists: the odds of going to college rise when high school students who say religion is important in their lives. The study also affirmed conventional wisdom about majors that buoy belief and those which are faith busters. If you want to stay the course, take business or education; if you're up for temptation, try humanities and social sciences. Follow-up: "Postmodernism rather than science, is the bete noir—the strongest antagonist—of religiosity."Much ink has been spilt over new policies on gays and lesbians that put the Episcopal Church at odds with the worldwide Anglican convention. Despite the Archbishop of Canterbury's mediation attempts, the American church seems determined to push the issue. This past week, dioceses in Minnesota and California nominated practicing lesbians and gays as candidates for bishop, flouting the current Anglican ban. (Nominees are presented to local diocese at convention and delegates vote for their choice.)On Sunday, The Los Angeles Times ran a lengthy editorial on the denomination's recent affirmations. Rather than dismiss the decisions as an internal theological debate, the paper placed them in the context of society's evolving commitment to equality and conclusion—and the concomitant global push back. Said the paper:"The strides made by the Episcopal Church thus are especially significant, and especially commendable, because they occur against a backdrop of both cultural and religious resistance. Supporters of Proposition 8 weren't the only ones to cloak prejudice with piety."In the past, newspapers routinely editorialized on religious matters but since few do now, it's jarring to see the Times opine on a sectarian issue. But this is exactly why the General Convention is open to the public and welcomes the press; the church's mission is not just to shepherd the fold but to reach and teach the rest of us. In the days to come, I'm sure we'll hear a lot about how the church is neither reaching nor teaching—and almost as much about the "liberal" media preaching to the choir.My colleagues at getreligion rightfully note that while all eyes have been on the Episcopalians, most missed the Methodists take a different tack in the body wars. There's four times as many Methodists than Episcopalians in the US, but they don't get even half the press. Why? Could be part of that liberal media conspiracy—or maybe men with collars mean dollars.Diane Winston
When I was 20 years old I boarded a train for Auschwitz. The year was 1992. Courtesy of 10 years at a predominantly Jewish summer camp in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, I was probably the only Arab child that ever grew up fearing the Holocaust. I took the initiative of seeing with my own eyes a place whose existence is held to be an absolute truth by some, so much so that its denial is punishable by law in some countries. Nonbelievers have told me that it didn't exist. Typically this debate is about heaven. What I saw was hell. It was a dreary winter day. Having arrived in Berlin, I connected to Krakow where I took a cab to the camp. Walking around, I absorbed the unfathomable. That same winter I also visited Terezin in Czechoslovakia and Dachau in Germany trying to wrap my mind around what I had seen. I remember wishing I could go back to the days when the only Jewish camp I had ever set foot in was in New England.
While watching the fiasco surrounding the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. unfold in the media, it became more and more apparent the some things in society would never change. There are those who would conjecture that this incident was racially motivated. But those politics don’t really warrant my immediate attention. What garners my immediate attention is the effect of arrogance and mediocrity that has made this incident extremely relevant in the minds of Americans, Blacks, White, Asians, and other critically thinking citizens of the world. The arrest of Professor Gates brings something even more disturbing to light. His arrest provides evidence the majority population in this country, as in other countries, never wants to be seen as incorrect or wrong. More importantly, if they have to be called out as wrong, they definitely don’t want to be called out members of a minority population.
By Jewcy Staff
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon, best known for his novels The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policemen's Union, has a memoir called Manhood for Amateurs coming out this fall. Among other subjects, the book covers his life with wife - and fellow author - Ayelet Waldman and their four children. Today's Page Six has a blurb about Chabon and the comments he makes about circumcision in Manhood:
"Mutilation the only honest name for this raw act that my ...
Following up on yesterday's post on Kip Kosek's Acts of Conscience, today we feature Kip's thoughts on Steve Taylor's Acts of Conscience: World War Two, Mental Institutions, and Religious Objectors (Syracuse University Press). ___________________________________________RELIGION IN THE TOTAL INSTITUTION
by Kip KosekThe first thing to say about Steven J. Taylor’s new book is that it has an absolutely brilliant title. I know it’s brilliant because it happens to be the same title that I chose for my own book. Yes, by some strange manifestation of accidental publishing telepathy, two histories of radical pacifism in America appeared this year with the title Acts of Conscience. My book has been the subject of a few posts on this site; now it’s time to say a bit about Taylor’s work, which made me realize how little we know about religion in what the sociologist Erving Goffman called “total institutions.” Taylor focuses on some World War II conscientious objectors and the alternative service they performed in mental hospitals. When those upstanding Mennonites and Methodists (among others) went to labor in the nation’s institutions for the so-called “feebleminded,” they were dumbfounded by what they saw: violence, overcrowding, disease, and an overpowering stench that permeated everything. Inmates attacked them with makeshift weapons, while hospital staffs resented the intrusion of untrained assistants with lots of ideas about how to change things.The conscientious objectors set out to publicize the horrific conditions that they witnessed. For a few years after the war, state governments and national media picked up their stories and made the care of the mentally disabled into a national scandal. A writer in PM compared the hospitals to concentration camps, while a 1947 exposé called Out of Sight, Out of Mind gained the endorsement of Eleanor Roosevelt. Taylor is careful not to overstate how much good the publicity did, but it seems that the pacifists’ efforts mitigated some of the worst abuses. If pacifist religion reformed mental hospitals, so, too, did experience in the hospitals transform that religion. The objectors had to ask hard questions about what nonviolence meant amid the challenges presented by uncooperative and often violent patients. One Mennonite attendant described using a restraining hold on one of his charges: “I tried the full nelson on the man to control him, but in no way beat him or bruised him. And I do not feel that is misusing our Mennonite principles.” Nonviolence turned out to be a little ambiguous in these settings. Taylor’s book made me think more generally about religion in “total institutions”: prisons, asylums, military barracks, and other spaces separated from the larger society where individuals face constant surveillance and discipline (no, universities do not count). Most of us write these off as secular realms, rocky ground where faith is unlikely to flourish or even survive. After all, Michel Foucault does not generally inspire reflection on the spiritual dimensions of existence.Nonetheless, we know that religion happens in these constrained environments. Simply recall the spiritual dread in Ernest Hemingway’s World War I story “Now I Lay Me” or the prison conversion in The Autobiography of Malcolm X. These literary accounts offer far more insight than almost anything historians have produced. One reason may be that relatively few academics have firsthand experience of “total institutions” – and we like it that way. A few religion scholars, though, have ventured into this treacherous terrain. Jonathan Ebel’s recent article in Church History, based on research for his forthcoming book, thoughtfully examines the “muscular Christianity” of the American soldier in the First World War (get the abstract here). In GI Jews, Deborah Dash Moore interviewed American Jewish veterans of World War II to discover the heroic improvisations that they made to keep their religious traditions alive at the front. Prisons are less well-studied. I have high hopes for Winnifred Sullivan’s Prison Religion (which I haven’t yet read) and for Tanya Erzen’s work-in-progress on prison evangelicalism (get an article citation here). I don’t know what kind of institution you’d call New Hope, the ex-gay residential ministry that Erzen examined in Straight to Jesus, but she depicted it with a sensitivity that made that book one of the best recent ethnographies of American spiritual life. The study of religion in prisons, asylums, and barracks seems unlikely to produce the uplifting stories of popular spiritual creativity that both academic and general audiences seem to prefer. Yet over one million Americans are currently on active duty and over two million are in prison. Added to all the other participants in our “total institutions,” past and present, this is a huge group of people that historians of religion have mostly left out of sight, out of mind.By Olivia Torres (AP, July 7, 2009)
Ciudad Juarez, Mexico - An anti-crime activist and a neighbor, both members of the pacifist Mennonite community in northern Mexico, were killed Tuesday by gunmen believed linked to a drug cartel, a local legislator said.
Now that the John Ensign/Mark Sanford/Tom Coburn scandal has placed the "C Street House" operated by the secretive elite fundamentalist...
By Andrew Ramer
Don't tell me about the Shekhinah.
How God's female aspect
is a sacred part of our tradition.
The word "aspect" gives it all away.
Your Shekhinah is God's sidekick
chum
Purim drag costume.
She's His sad dark girlfriend
evicted from her Jerusalem apartment
by the Romans
and wandering ever since.
I don't want an Aspect in my prayers
not even that upgrade to First Class
Yah Shekhinah.
Yah is a masculine form
not the Tah Shekhinah that would
make it truly female.
This is what I ...
Back in January, it was hard to imagine a single media event that could rival Barack Obama's inauguration. But less than six months later, Michael Jackson's passing has come very close. Jackson's death stopped the clock—and the news cycle—overshadowing even the president's trips to Russia and Italy. Everything else was a blur: Auto company bailouts? California budget crisis? Bernie who?
From TMZ to Anderson Cooper, the media dropped everything, flew out to Tinseltown, and camped out on media platforms outside Staples Center. ABC News sent their dream team, which had not been assembled for any event since the inauguration: Charles Gibson, Barbara Walters, Martin Bashir, Cynthia McFadden, and Robin Roberts. They all reminisced about the Thriller days.
But now that cash-strapped L.A.'s clean up crews have restored Staples Center to its usual summer calm, we can recall what was happening before we dusted off the old Jackson LP's. On the religion beat, reporters were writing about surveys that suggested Americans were among the most fickle religious folks in the world. Data from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life show that more than half of American adults have changed religions at least once.Jackson was among them. But the coverage about his faith, both before and after his death was anything but conclusive. Over the years questionable reporting linked him to Islam, Kabbalah, and just about every other faith tradition. Jackson himself once spoke candidly of growing up as a Jehovah's Witness in a 2000 Beliefnet article. ("After all, even reporters are children of God," he said.)At his memorial service Tuesday, a stained glass backdrop hung behind a gospel choir as Jackson's gold casket was carried in. Other than Rev. Lucius Smith and Rev. Al Sharpton, no other religious officials presided at the service. Their comments shied away from Jackson's faith or religious practice. The Jackson family itself remains divided along religious lines. His mother Katherine is reportedly still a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Several of her children have fallen away from their childhood faith. Michael denounced the church shortly after the release of Thriller and his brother Jermaine converted to Islam in 1989. Like many American families, their family tree is a mosaic of different faiths.Although religion played a small role in the memorial service, it played an even smaller role in the media coverage. Even ABC's dream team didn't give much background on Rev. Lucius Smith, calling him a "family friend." Why did reporters shy away from asking these questions? As burial arrangements are made, there will be opportunities to discover more about Jackson and his faith, if reporters dig deep enough.Blogger Juan Cole pointed out some of the reasons why Jackson's faith was never fully understood, and how that actually played into his status as a pop idol. "Jackson was a man of multiple identities," Cole writes. "Toward the end of his life he bridged his family's Jehovah's Witness brand of Christianity with a profound interest in Islam. He was all things to all people in part precisely because of his Peter Pan syndrome. A child can grow up to become anything, after all."One religion angle on the story did seem to stick, and that was the devout love of his fans. Get Religion called him St. Michael, the pop angel, and chastised coverage that seemed to worship the man himself. "How do you find substance — journalistic, moral, religious, political — in this kind of show-business event? The family couldn't really decide what faith tradition to emphasize, so the default was a vague, sanitized version of African-American gospel music, crossed with MTV." The problems that Get Religion pointed out could be addressed with solid reporting into the religious complexity of the family, and why the memorial was structured the way it was.Scholar Gary Laderman expanded on how Jackson's image has become sanctified since his death. "Like Elvis, or even Oprah, his life story now in death has a moral valence… about being human with weaknesses and vulnerabilities, but also being superhuman and immortal in the eyes of devoted fans who invest body and soul in their idols." Now that the memorial is over, we can ask these deeper questions about the religious aspects of American pop culture, including mourning a celebrity.The story of Michael Jackson's death has captivated billions of people from around the world, and from every major faith tradition. It's a fascinating angle on a story about a man who had so many eccentricities.
by Phillip Luke SinitiereFor my American Religious History class this fall, I'm considering revamping the course by assigning 3 or 4 novels (and perhaps a memoir). As I've done in the past, Religion in American Life will serve as the main anchor text for the course, and I'll have a host of other primary and secondary readings for students to examine.I once assigned a memoir, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (1963), and asked students to consider Baldwin's ideas about the relationship between race, religion and democratic society. Students enjoyed the book--partly because of its relative brevity--but mostly due to its deep and hefty subject matter and Baldwin's engaging and accessible writing. I will probably assign it again at some point.Some have suggested using Black Robe (1985), and Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood (1952). Malcolm X's Autobiography seems to be a mainstay. For me, the fact that each of these books have been made into a movie makes them compelling assignments--rich ground to discuss interpretive vantage points via text and film--but certainly there are many other worthy choices. I'd like to assign novels (or memoirs) that cover multiple time periods and address a variety of themes.So, what are your experiences using novels (or memoirs) to teach American religious history? What novels (or memoirs) have worked best for specific periods? What novels (or memoirs) work best to address topics such as gender, immigration, race, ethnicity, class, unbelief, or sexuality? What novels (or memoirs) explore lived religion or popular religion, or even religious pluralism? What are the possibilities, promises, and peril of the novel (or memoir) approach?
By Nathalie Rothschild
Perhaps Al Gore, while preparing for his speech this week at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford, England, laid down on the lawn of his multimillion dollar Nashville mansion, gazed at the cloud formations above, and thought that one of them looked remarkably like Hitler.
Because in Oxford, Gore said that, when it comes to global warming, politicians should follow the lead of Winston Churchill, ‘who aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save ...
By Peggy Fletcher Stack ("The Salt Lake Tribune", July 5, 2009)
Salt Lake City, USA - On the day Ronan James Head received his traditional baby blessing in the mid-1970s, someone suggested the LDS congregation sing "America the Beautiful."
By Shankar Vedantam ("Washington Post", July 7, 2009)
Washington, USA - Hundreds of embryonic stem cell lines, whose use in the United States had effectively been curtailed by the Bush administration, can be used to study disorders and develop cures if researchers can show the cells were derived using ethical procedures, according to new rules issued by the federal government yesterday.
(BBC, July 6, 2009)
London, UK - An exam board has scrapped a GCSE biology question about creationism after admitting it could be misleading.
Economic news, the possibility of health-care reform and even the death of "king of pop" Michael Jackson have dominated the...
By Robert J. Saiget (AFP, July 7, 2009)
Wutaishan, China – Temples thrive, monks travel far and wide in search of enlightenment, the faithful fill the halls of worship -- after decades of atheist policies, Buddhism is making a huge comeback in China.
By Ariel David (AP, July 8, 2009)
Vatican City - Pope Benedict XVI moved Wednesday to tighten control over reconciliation with an ultraconservative group by putting one of the Vatican's most powerful offices in charge of an effort that sparked fierce criticism when it led to the lifting of excommunication for a Holocaust-denying bishop.
By Okan Konuralp ("Hurriyet", July 8, 2009)
Ankara, Turkey - A religious leader in Istanbul has banned life-like dolls, arguing that the long legs and natural hair of some versions could excite an individual.
By Mia Rut
It’s pretty easy to eat local food in New York City. Scattered throughout the five boroughs are farmers markets and CSAs are plentiful. Since I moved to Brooklyn I’ve joined the Park Slope Co-op that displays a map of its farms and suppliers on its website. There are also plenty of restaurants that feature local and season foods on its menu (I recently went to Nick and Toni’s Café, which I highly recommend).
And for those desiring to gather and produce their own local fare, we ...