Religion Dispatches
…India, but raised in America. The great advantage for us growing up in the United States was the ability to develop our own identity. I was brought up an Indian Muslim. There were so few of us Indians in the U.S. then that if you saw a woman in a sari on the other end of the shopping mall, you went running over to introduce yourself and, a day or two later, your whole families were having tandoori chicken picnics together. I was about 8 or 9 when…
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…g religious within its content, yet a conservative Christian reader in the United States today is likely going to see religious significance in the article nonetheless. Protestants consuming media about substance use a century ago similarly saw significant religious implications whether journalists wrote about it that way or not. The antidrug campaigns of Rear Admiral Richmond Pearson Hobson, an influential Prohibitionist, short-term congressman,…
Read More…t a history that he believed could carry the nation into the future as a reunited whole. His most brilliant rhetoric—the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery and his second inaugural address—calls upon Americans to attend to the “unfinished work” of this enterprise, and suggest that those who have died in the Civil War demand nothing less. This entreaty to “finish the work we are in” plays well as the closing act of the semester. It is, if I may…
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…istianity—that fairly describes the majority of religious believers in the United States, for all of their extraordinary diversity. That said, regarding diversity among Christians in the U.S., we have no central ecclesiastical authority to define who and what is and is not Christian. Lacking common definitions can affect our responses to the likes of Clayton Waagner, Scott Roeder, and the Hutaree. For example, liberal Washington Post columnist Eug…
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…even mentioned the roughly three million African American Catholics in the United States. Nor, have I given any space to the African-based traditions such as Voodoo, Ifa, and Santería–to name only a few–that claim the attention and adherence of many African Americans. And what about the three million African Americans who have embraced Sunni Islam? Do you get my point? Much of this nuance, these differences, are lost in sound bites and news report…
Read More…he doesn’t meet the natural born citizen requirement for president of the United States. Peroutka chimed in: “all the debate that’s been about where he was born doesn’t matter. The point is, who’s your daddy, and your mommy, that’s where your loyalty is. . . . His father — he’s not eligible to be president of the United States.” Afterwards, Lofton provided me with a recording of an interview he did with Titus late last month, in which Titus laid…
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…ment were the major bodies promoting a tradition of moderate reform in the United States (he readily acknowledges minority groups and exceptional individuals outside this tradition who sought to incorporate women, blacks, Jews, etc. into the consensus). Thus, despite Darwinism, the rise of the social sciences, and an advancing secular culture, something like a coalition once existed between the major Protestant denominations—Methodist, Presbyteria…
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…temples. Shortly after, the group officially incorporated as the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB). By 1970, the group had communities in Pinesdale, MT, as well as in Bluffdale and Rocky Ridge, UT. When Allred died in 1977, he was succeeded by his brother, Owen Allred, followed by LaMoine Jenson, the man he appointed as his successor and who served as the leader of the community until 2014. Thompson assumed leadership of the group following Jenson’s…
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…omise of psychedelic medicines.” While most of the existing centers in the United States take narrower approaches, either choosing to focus on the scientific study of psychedelics or training clinicians and chaplains in psychedelic-assisted therapies, the ECPS promises to take a more holistic approach, combining scientific research with clinical experience and application. As the ECPS’s website puts it, the center seeks to: “leverage an active and…
Read More…s’s eventual return. There are approximately one million Adventists in the United States, and 18 million worldwide. Observing the Sabbath on Saturday, not Sunday, and a commitment to health and wellness, including vegetarianism, are prominent features that distinguish Adventism from other Christian denominations. Protecting the Saturday Sabbath observance has driven Adventist involvement in legal challenges under the Free Exercise Clause, such as…
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