Arts & Culture
Image via 'Come Sunday' trailer
Sometimes, the film tells us, there are no good answers. All we can do is sit with our thoughts and do our best to love each other well.
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The news of Silverman’s dismissal is a serious second blow to organized atheism, which has long struggled with charges of sexism and discrimination. In February, similarly explosive allegations were made against Lawrence Krauss, a prominent scientist at Arizona State University, best-selling author and popular speaker at atheist and skeptic events.
Tsehaitu Abye holds up a banner as people demonstrate outside a Starbucks cafe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., April 15, 2018 in this picture obtained from social media. TWITTER / @JILLIANPHL/via REUTERS
Ross said that as an African-American man he was acutely aware of implicit bias. "We are committed to fair and unbiased policing and anything less than that will not be tolerated in this department," he said.
Image via Netflix.
"The Carlton story was appealing partly because it's just an amazing story about a man standing up for what he believes in, and then he just loses everything. It's a very old-fashioned kind of cinematic story. Then it was exciting that the entire story takes place in the church. There aren't outsiders at all. It's evangelicals talking to other evangelicals."
1. The Rules of the Asian Body in America
“The story of the Asian body in America is a story about rules, money, race, and imperialism.”
2. One Year Later, Fewer Deportations in Cities That Adopted 'Welcoming' Policies
When local governments collaborate with ICE, deportations increase—in some places, more than 75 percent. But New Mexico shows a different way.
Image via Joe Brusky / Flickr
The survey illustrates the intersectionality of race and environmental justice, referencing research by the NAACP that found that race is the principle indicator of the level of susceptibility to environmentally-caused negative health outcomes, as well as economic and pyschological impacts.
April 12 marks Holocaust Remembrance Day. Each year communities and schools plan various events such as reading the names of Holocaust victims and survivors, forums of Holocaust survivor speakers, or panel discussions with historians. These events run through an entire week of remembrance.
“This is how the world is meant to be.” That’s what Randall Wright, director of the exceptionally powerful new feature-length documentary Summer in the Forest, said he thought the first time he visited one of the L’Arche communities founded by Jean Vanier that are the subject of his film.
Image via Michael Thielen / Flickr
The Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country has revived interest in the “free-love cult” founded by Indian guru Rajneesh, or “Osho,” that in 1984 launched a “bioterror attack,” spreading salmonella in restaurants near the group’s Oregon headquarters.
Image via Peter Kramer/NBC
My obsessive inner nerd rose to attention. You couldn’t have seen resurrection in Jesus Christ Superstar because there was no resurrection in Jesus Christ Superstar. That was the point! [I online shouted.] That’s why some considered it scandalous — a very human Jesus, a Judas who makes a lot of sense if you listen to him, and no Jesus rising from the dead. It doesn’t deny the resurrection. It just stops beforehand
1. Reigniting King’s Forgotten Campaign
Fifty years later, a new moral movement picks up where Martin Luther King Jr.'s final campaign left off. But will it succeed?
Stormy Daniels is interviewed by Anderson Cooper. CBSNews/60 MINUTES/via REUTERS
At the time, authors like conservative political activists Tim and Beverly LaHaye and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson acknowledged that porn was a problem that Christians (almost always men but on occasion women) faced. Their writing focused on how pornography harmed marital relationships and personal well-being. At the same time, however, it described how devout Christians may be pornography consumers.
Image via Babette's Feast Onstage/Facebook
Rather than setting Babette’s culinary art and the villagers’ religious commitments in conflict, as if the ambitions of the spirit now succumb to the desires of the flesh, the play links the townspeople’s devotion and Babette’s art as necessary companions. They are more alive for receiving the gift, and Babette is the more beautiful for being allowed her generosity.
Image via University of California Press / RNS
The most important thing for Muslims is that we have individual Muslims occupying spaces of power now. We have the agency and the empathy to develop stories about our religion and our people that can help erode demonization of our faith. We have a mounting generation of leaders in various sectors who can do that more successfully than ever. I see that as a big step.
Image via Hernán Piñera / Flickr
The letters declared April 3 to be "Punish a Muslim" Day, advocating for acts of violence against Muslims, including throwing acid in the face of a Muslim and bombing a mosque.
People gather to march in the annual parade down MLK Boulevard to honor MartinLuther King, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, U.S., January 16, 2017. REUTERS/Billy Weeks
“Then we poor people will move on Washington, determined to stay there until the legislative and executive branches of the government take serious and adequate action on jobs and income.”
Image via Ready Player One trailer
Unfortunately, that’s not a sentiment shared by the rest of the film. In their quest, Wade and his friends display their encyclopedic knowledge of vintage pop culture as badges to be worn, or tools to be used, rather than pieces of personal meaning. At one point, Sorrento meets with Wade to try and win him over, spouting references fed to him by a lackey in another room. Wade calls his bluff, telling his enemy, “A fanboy knows a hater.” But it’s hard to see much of a difference between the two characters in that moment. They’re both using rote, memorized facts, rather than actual connection, to fuel their conversation and get what they want. The only difference is that Wade had to do the research on his own, while Sorrento has a team doing it for him.
Image via Creative Commons / RNS
“Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity,” King said in a radio address in India.
Image via Adelle M. Banks / RNS
As tourists move toward Room 306, they can look out a window past the wreath on the balcony across the street to the partially open bathroom window of the boardinghouse from which the assassin’s bullet was released. “Dr. King never uttered a word after being shot,” reads the display in front of the room.
Image via Adair733/Flickr
There is no Selma for Ella Josephine Baker. But there would likely have been no Selma without her, either. And maybe that matters just as much.