Religion Dispatches
…s Christian Coalition—or even any of dozens of significant Religious Right groups—including the 35 state political affiliates of Focus on the Family—that have had any significant national or regional electoral muscle. To read the rest of Clarkson’s essay, go to Public Eye. ++++++++++ RD Tidbits YouTube Pulls Palin Video: In a previous “RD News Round-up” we cited Bruce Wilson’s article, and the accompanying video, about the Sarah Palin’s churches….
Read More…ore refused to discontinue a promotion which offers its customers discount tickets to a Christian magic show produced by Lawrence Khong, the anti-gay pastor of Faith Community Baptist Church: Mr Khong has claimed that gay people have “a shorter lifespan, more sexually transmitted infections and more health problems than the general population” and has warned of a “looming threat” of “homosexual activists” trying to repeal sodomy laws. Many custome…
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…t Magnolia did it better. Similarly, Liel Leibovitz at Tablet thinks that Groundhog Day and Fight Club are more likely to inspire religious discussion than Noah. God’s Not Dead presents philosophy as the enemy of Christianity, but the screenwriter doesn’t seem to know much about philosophy. At Patheos, real-life atheist philosophy professor Dan Fincke offers a point-by-point rebuttal to the film (including a section called “How I Graded Religious…
Read More…and Sen. McCain stand on the above issues, here. ++++++++++ Updates from Ground Zero in the same-sex marriage wars The No on Prop 8 campaign has “unveiled” its first television ad in its campaign to defeat Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that would reverse the recent California Supreme Court’s decision ruling same-sex marriage legal. According to the Advocate, the ad, titled “The Thorons—Don’t Eliminate Marriage For Anyone,” “feat…
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…e session public was announced after Ordain Women requested and was denied tickets in September. Although some media outlets referred to the action as a protest, Kelly, an international human rights attorney from Washington, D.C., said it should be more accurately understood as a conversation. “There isn’t a clear way to reach the prophet or the leaders. We can’t simply call them up and ask them to pray about an issue that is of concern to us,” s…
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…What causal contribution do they make? Did anybody make a decision, did subgroups make a decision, did they just sort of all play their little parts and the aggregation of all these individual parts make up the institution, the collective behavior? None of this we normally know about an institution, and even if they haven’t done anything bad yet, just watching them you’d wonder why exactly and who exactly does what. But of course we care the most…
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…oommate over a period of months in 1970. Although I can’t find an official number, a casino employee tells us over 5,000 tickets have been sold; 5,000 pilgrims who’ve made the trek from around the country to pay their respects to Annabelle, and are willing to wait hours to do so. On the convention floor, an eclectic group of vendors hocks their wares, from Ouija boards and books about ghost hunting to bath bombs shaped like horror movie icons. The…
Read More…was on the cusp of becoming one of the most significant Christian lobbying groups on Israeli-Palestinian issues. In addition, he was the author of a number of books, the latest of which urged the United States to get muscular with Iran. In February, after being courted by Team McCain for more than in year, Hagee endorsed Sen. John McCain for the presidency. Then Talk2Action’s Bruce Wilson got busy. He delved into the pastor’s sermons, his writing…
Read More…ide epidemic of rising medical costs, disparate levels of care and growing numbers of uninsured or underinsured Americans,” the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy recently reported. “You’re describing the perfect storm,” Neil Calman, CEO of the Bronx, New York-based Institute for Family Health, a speaker at the event, responded to an audience member’s comment: “People are going to find the situation will get increasingly worse and go…
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…y from Victorian sentimentalism. Such angels are on sale at reduced price; cheap wares for cheap faith. It would be an error, however, to fully dismiss pop culture angels. Despite the fact that representations of angels in film and television, comics and music, paperback novels and posters, are filtered through market concerns, such pop culture can still speak to human meaning—and because of that they merit our attention. Besides, the bulk of art…
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