Latest news with #religion
New York Times
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Churchyard' and ‘Tablet' Review: Irreverence and Resurrection
Paul Taylor isn't commonly discussed as a religious choreographer, but religious themes run through the nearly 150 dances he made across six decades. That his perspective was usually irreverent doesn't mean it was unserious. William Blake, explaining why Satan has the best lines in John Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' wrote that Milton was 'of the Devil's party without knowing it.' Taylor's dances often seem to suggest that we're all of the devil's party and that it would be hypocritical to pretend otherwise, but also that the implications of that truth could be very dark. Take 'Churchyard' (1969), one of the two works that the Paul Taylor Dance Company has reconstructed for its run at the Joyce Theater this week. It starts with a woman wearing what looks like a nun's wimple, her palms pressed together in prayer. The accompanying music sounds medieval, and the actions of the dancers who soon join her are both prayerful and pastoral, almost Edenic. Halfway through the dance, though, these images are replaced with the cavorting of devils or maybe the damned. Now with bulges like tumors in their costumes, the dancers fling themselves around in gnarled, twisted positions, jumping like frogs and scratching themselves. The men carry the women upside down, and the woman from the beginning, now a siren-like figure in a cape, swings her head to slap the ground with her braid. It's like a Hieronymus Bosch painting with touches of go-go dancing. Taylor called the work's two sections 'Sacred' and 'Profane.' But the sacred half isn't pure. The score — by the semi-forgotten avant-gardist Andrew Sarchiapone, who called himself Cosmos Savage — mixes in sounds of storms, which could also be a bowling alley next door. The innocent interactions between men and women are so chivalrous that they're arch, with hints of lust and trouble in paradise. The perversity of the choreographer-god seeps in with impossible-to-hold balances (set to fast music) and cruelly slow descents to the floor. The profane section is more fun, with naughty bits. But it is fun for us, not for the lost souls. There's desperation in their frantic activity. They seem compelled. And if their fate is ours, this memento mori of a dance is a nightmare. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Washington Post
3 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Shooting suspect went from youthful evangelizer to far-right zealot
SLEEPY EYE, Minn. — Vance Boelter grew up in a sports-loving Lutheran family in a small Minnesota town where nobody locked their doors — a background that gave little hint of the zealotry to come or the deadly violence of which he is now accused. At 17, he had a religious conversion. As he recalled decades later during a passionate sermon overseas, what happened next shook his life. Waving a Bible and thundering from the podium, he spoke about meeting the holy spirit and running off pamphlets about Jesus to give to everyone he knew. 'So often in the world today, everyone wants an excuse for not doing the right thing. We want to blame someone else,' he preached from the Democratic Republic of Congo, as seen in a video posted online. 'God doesn't say 'Oh, your parents messed up, I know you came into this world all troubled.' … You have a choice, you have a decision.' Friends and neighbors of the 57-year-old Boelter say they are struggling to understand what drove him to masquerade as a police officer and allegedly shoot two state legislators and their spouses in predawn hours Saturday — leaving state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband dead and the other couple seriously injured. Some point to his teenage conversion and the startling change that followed, one that became very public in Sleepy Eye, a burg of about 3,500 about two hours southwest of Minneapolis. Through much of high school, Boelter was like every other teen, according to his lifelong friend David Carlson. But after Boelter declared himself a born-again Christian, he began preaching in the local park — even living there in a tent, Carlson said. 'Everything in his life — he just changed,' Carlson said Sunday. 'People were saying, 'Yeah, Vance is in the park preaching.' He was just trying to spread the word about Jesus.' Boelter grew up one of five siblings in a family that was locally famous for baseball — his father, Donald, was the high school coach and later selected for the Minnesota State High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. They lived in a turreted, two-story house on a corner lot in a neighborhood where American flags fly today from porches and flagpoles. His senior year, Boelter was named 'Most Courteous' and 'Most Friendly,' according to images of his high school yearbook shared by one of his classmates. It listed him as captain of the basketball team and a member of the baseball team, football team and chorus. 'Vance was a normal kid who came from a middle-class background,' said Wendel Lamason, who was friends with Boelter until Lamason moved to another town for eighth grade. The family was part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a mainstream Protestant denomination, and the elder Boelter was active on his church's council. Ron Freimark, who pastored a different Lutheran congregation in Sleepy Eye, remembers the boy participating in church youth groups. 'He wasn't rebellious. He was polite and all that,' Freimark said Monday afternoon. 'He was just a good kid.' According to his LinkedIn profile, Boelter went on to attend St. Cloud State University and graduated with a degree in international relations. On a now-defunct website for Revoformation, a nonprofit he founded several years later, Boelter laid out a basic biography and said he had been 'ordained' in 1993. He said he had gone to a small Catholic college near Milwaukee — Cardinal Stritch, which is now closed — as well as Christ for the Nations Institute, a Dallas school that is part of the broad, nondenominational world of charismatic Christianity. And, the bio claimed, he had made trips overseas to seek out 'militant Islamists' to 'tell them violence wasn't the answer.' Christ for the Nations was founded in 1970 by Gordon Lindsay, a prominent preacher in independent, charismatic Christianity. The focus of the movement initially was on evangelizing, faith healing and experiential worship such as speaking in tongues. In the last quarter-century, however, a segment of it turned to politics and changing policies, especially around abortion. A Lindsay quote long posted in the school's lobby reads: 'Everyone ought to pray at least one violent prayer each day.' The exhortation, the school said Monday, described prayer that should be 'intense, fervent and passionate.' In a statement, it confirmed Boelter had graduated in 1990 with a degree in Practical Theology in Leadership and Pastoral and said it was 'aghast and horrified' at the news that the alum was a suspect. 'This is not who we are,' the statement said. 'We have been training Christian servant leaders for 55 years and they have been agents of good, not evil.' Based on his recent online presence, Boelter's views now appear to align with the political 'far right' of Christianity in the United States, said Matthew Taylor, a senior Christian scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies. Its core believes in demons and satanic evil in the world and a need 'to fight back against it,' Taylor said. He added that the group disseminates 'very extreme' rhetoric about abortion, which he said some of its leaders have portrayed as a form of child sacrifice that empowers demons. Boelter 'seems very much to embrace some of the violent rhetoric and ideas that circulate through those spaces,' Taylor said. In and around Minneapolis, Boelter spent most of his career in the food industry while, as Carlson put it, dreaming of launching a security business. A former neighbor in Sleepy Eye said Boelter, his wife and children — four girls and a boy — moved back there around 2008 when he took a job as a production coordinator for the local Del Monte plant. The family bought a three-bedroom fixer-upper on Maple Street and spent their time at the public pool or hosting Bible studies, said the neighbor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns. Boelter's wife, Jenny, was a stay-at-home mom who always had a smile on her face and brought apple pies over around the holidays, the neighbor said. 'They were friendly, almost too friendly,' he said. 'It was almost like there was never anything wrong.' Flags for the fallen lawmakers were at half-staff Monday in Sleepy Eye, a town named for a famous Native American Dakota chief from the 1800s. The business stretch of Main Street goes about five blocks, with several historical buildings and a repurposed movie theater's marquee promoting a coffee shop and brewing company. Drive just a bit farther and the flat Midwestern landscape is dotted with farms and silver grain silos. Beki Gewerth, a lifelong resident, said Boelter's mother still lives in a nursing home up the street and most everybody around knows the family. 'They're very well-liked,' she said. 'To hear what happened … what the heck.' Patrick Marley in Minneapolis and Praveena Somasundaram and Chris Dehghanpoor in Washington, D.C. contributed to this report.
Russia Today
4 days ago
- General
- Russia Today
Islam growing three times as fast as Christianity
Islam grew approximately three times as fast as Christianity between 2010 and 2020, spurred by higher birth rates and lower rates of deconversion, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. The global population of Muslims rose by nearly 21% over the ten-year span, while the number of Christians only grew by around 6%, according to data from the study, which was released last week. The number of Muslims grew twice as fast as the rest of the world's population, which expanded by 10% during the same decade. Islam also gained more individual followers than all non-Muslim religions combined during the decade, the research indicated. The study cited higher birth rates and a younger average age among adherents of Islam as key reasons for the growth. On average, a Muslim woman was estimated to have 2.9 children during her lifetime, compared to 2.2 for non-Muslim women, the research suggested, citing 2015-2020 data. New converts and those leaving the faith had little impact on the growth, as both averaged about 1% during the 2010s, according to the study. Despite growing more slowly, Christianity had remained the world's largest religion, with 2.3 billion followers in 2020, while Islam held second place with 2 billion, the research indicated. While the number of Christians grew within the ten-year period, the religion's overall share of the global population shrank by nearly 2%, according to the data. Christian population growth has tapered due to high rates of people leaving to become religiously unaffiliated, according to the study. Despite relatively high fertility rates among adherents, the faith witnessed a net loss of 11.6 adults for every 100 adults who were raised as Christian. 'Islam is set to grow to become the world's largest religion in years ahead, unless trend lines shift,' said Conrad Hackett, the lead researcher at the Pew Research Center and the main author of the study, according to The Washington Post. He added that it was 'striking' to see such a dramatic shift in just a decade, pointing out that the Muslim and Christian populations had grown closer in size as Islam expanded more rapidly than any other major faith. The research covered thousands of censuses and surveys in 201 countries and focused on seven groups: Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, other religions, and individuals who do not identify with any particular religion.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
In White Sox stadium broadcast, Pope Leo XIV sends message of hope to Chicago and the US
In his first words directed specifically to Americans, Pope Leo XIV told young people on Saturday how to find hope and meaning in their lives through God and in service to others.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Dear Richard Madeley:‘We're fed up with our son lecturing us about religion'
My young son – he's 23 – has become very religious and is starting to make critical comments about my and his mother's lifestyle. My partner and I have both had to steer a course between the traditional views of our own parents and the prevailing culture of our generation and our respective professions, and we are broadly happy with where we have ended up – but we're finding his lectures a little tedious. We have attempted to engage him in conversation about this a couple of times but, of course, when one's view is backed up by a sacred text claiming to be the revealed truths of a divine being, there's not much that one can say. I love this boy with all my heart but I've started to dread his weekend visits home. What can we do to find a middle way? – N, via email How unutterably tedious for you both. For all the positives (and comforts) a 'true faith' offers, one of the many accompanying curses of organised religion is the tendency in some adherents to proselytise. To lecture. To finger-wave, moralise and judge. And when it's happening under one's own roof… well, I can only sympathise. Actually, I can do a bit more than that, N. The fact that you've been driven to write to me reveals just how thin your patience must be wearing. Before it snaps completely, you should move on to the front foot; take the initiative. Before your darling boy's next visit home, call him. Keep your tone pleasant, friendly, but firm. Explain that you and his mother are looking forward to seeing him again, but that there is a new house rule: no discussions about faith, religion or God. Say that you both prefer to reflect inwardly on your own belief systems, and choose a meditative approach over explicit discussion or argument. Make it clear in a relaxed way that this is not up for debate: we are each entitled to our own relationship with God – you to yours; he to his. Then change the subject. If he tries to return to it, be firm. Say you've made your decision – the new house rule is now in place – so there's simply no more to be said. I can't guarantee success, N, but it's clear to me you must exercise your parental authority. The Old Testament God has a mantra for that: 'Honour thy father and mother.' I believe the Koran says something similar. You can find more of Richard Madeley's advice here or submit your own dilemma below. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
