Religion Dispatches is a daily online magazine dedicated to the analysis and understanding of religious forces in the world today, highlighting a diversity of progressive voices and aimed at broadening and advancing the public conversation.
Rigorous, open and respectful debate about central issues of the day is essential if democracies are to survive and flourish. Although religion is one of the most powerful forces shaping domestic and global politics today, it remains among the least understood and under-analyzed dimensions of our world. Partisan religious voices are all too common, but they do little to help us understand the dynamics of religion in the contemporary world. Whether dealing with fundamentalist movements at home and abroad, the purported clash of civilizations or public controversies over sexuality, immigration, and AIDS, gaining a deeper understanding of the role of religion, for good and for ill, is imperative.
Religion Dispatches is an online magazine devoted to exploring the intersections of religion, values, and public life, nationally and globally. It aims to provide a platform for expert, critical exploration of religion in the contemporary world for a general readership. The goal of RD is to inform public debate by analyzing and critically engaging the role of religion and values on the most vital issues of our time. This will involve bringing a wider spectrum of perspectives into the conversation, especially voices that have been marginalized in most media, and increasing attention to progressive expressions of religion and values.
Religion Dispatches will provide information and analysis, and critical and constructive perspectives on public issues that explicitly or implicitly intersect with religion and values. It aims to foster thoughtful, informed, and engaged reflection on religion that is too often missing from the public debate. It will exemplify a form of public scholarship and reflection that contributes to a broad conversation on religion that respects multiple voices and avoids becoming an extension of singular political interests.