Religion Dispatches
…istian and Lutheran but at the cost of true discipleship. The price it was called upon to pay was all too cheap…We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale; we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition…Was there ever a more terrible and disastrous instance of Christianizing the world than this? It’s regrettable, I think, that “cheap grace” has turned into a kind of meme that Rod Dreher can toss into his deba…
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…als in order to get the blessings. I know that will seem distasteful and a caricature to some, but these events are well-attended, and at a hundred bucks a person, revenues from book and DVD sales. Conferences and meetings like Lou Engles’ The Call are not just prayer meetings, they are Christian marketplaces, with all sorts of spiritual wares being sold. As to the political interaction, all of these groups know they don’t have the numbers alone t…
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…ense as a way of distinguishing The Episcopal Church on the religious landscape from the evangelical Right and its culture wars against gay marriage and transgender rights, among other conservative bugaboos. Disaffected with the latter? The Episcopal Church welcomes you. Here’s the problem. This brand image is at odds with the fact that LGBTQ+ Episcopalians experience sexual victimization in Episcopal spaces at consistently higher rates than their…
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…ntenders for New Testament inclusion—the Gospel of Peter, for example—they can scan through the Early Christian Writings online database. The sticky problem for Christians, as with Muslims, is authority. With individual access to a host of early Christian texts, and inspired by Brown to question the New Testament’s authority, what should people believe? Today’s Christians must decide for themselves which texts “should” have been included in the Ne…
Read More…plugged-in lifestyle doesn’t really get at the heart of the issue. I think the Amish, of all people, have it right. It’s not so much about what you as an individual are doing or not doing, as the effect technology has on the community: Why not make life easier and just put [a phone] in the house? “What would that lead to?” another Amish man asked me. “We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a tel…
Read More…giveness for the living people who suffer harm. So in the afterglow or aftermath of Francis’ historic visit, the most important take-away may be the old sinner in the white cap who captured so many eyes and hearts here in the US—who reminded us that like him, the church itself is only human….
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…ages. This obviously precludes any nice-nice making for same-sex couples because that door to sacramental marriage remains closed ever more firmly by dint of this document. In Section 300 Francis even admits that there is nothing new in this Exhortation and that we shouldn’t have expected any rule changes from him or his bishops. After all, there’s only so much a pope can do, as Patti Miller explains on RD. At the conclusion of the 261-page Amoris…
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…vailable to commodification.” The melding of Eastern spirituality and American capitalism isn’t new. As the popularity of yoga demonstrates, adapted ritual practices can sell. (Much the same could be said, too, about many martial arts). Spiritual practices can also be harnessed for corporate ends. “American capitalism has had a long and durable romance with Eastern spirituality,” Michelle Goldberg wrote last year on newyorker.com. “For well over a…
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…attention to the crisis in our jails and prisons. It’s no secret that America incarcerates the largest share of its population than any country in the world. The rampant racial disparities in the criminal justice system and the use of incarceration to address poverty and other social problems is well documented. And our use of correctional facilities as primary mental healthcare providers is a scandal. However, the coronavirus won’t wait for piece…
Read More…ty’s voiceover reminds us that these three goals won’t be easy but that we can accomplish them because “we are the American People.” He also cites that we’ve done it before at Valley Forge, on the moon, and settling the West. If we just roll up our shirt sleeves we can get it done. Pawlenty’s message draws on three myths in American culture. First, there’s the myth of American exceptionalism. From John Winthrop forward, Americans have believed tha…
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