Religion Dispatches
This is the first of November. Before this month is over, I will make a major status change. In many cultures around the world Muslims identify the ones who have performed the hajj with a title, used before the name, just like we use Mr. or Ms. in English—Hajjah Naimah or Hajji Umar, for example. It can also be used alone, the way we say sir or ma’am. Occasionally it is used for an older person to show respect even if the person has not actually…
Read More…or and just gods that make up American civil religion—in American politics today? Bentley himself, despite his worldview, seemed to wonder. Standing behind a pulpit, he seemed to slip for a moment from politician to pastor; he, almost awkwardly, seemed to understand that there is in America today a difference but at the same time to believe that it was his responsibility to at that moment be both. His response to criticism sought to reassure with…
Read More…Nazis in concentration camps during World War II,” an apparent prelude to today’s discourse.) Pierce notes that Deal Hudson, who helped the George W. Bush presidential campaign with outreach to Catholics, wrote a “prescient” 1995 piece in his magazine Crisis, “about a possible alliance between evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics.” Deal wasn’t the first, of course; Francis Schaeffer famously called for co-belligerence as well, and t…
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…upporting Israel Is ‘God’s Foreign Policy.’” Just last month, Christianity Today featured a review of Caitlin Carenen’s The Fervent Embrace, in which Wheaton College professor Gary Burge took issue with the author’s broad categorization of evangelicalism as unilaterally Zionist, noting that “It is frustrating to see ourselves summarized through the extreme voices of Jerry Falwell or Hal Lindsey—and today, Pat Robertson and John Hagee. Evangelicals…
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…girl” who was deceived by a violent and unscrupulous husband, which helped promote identification with audiences. Today, however, such profiles are supplemented by actual visuals. Images of hard-working and non-threatening gay couples with their children enhance that audience identification even further. I’m interested in your observation that religion is a “malleable tool” where marriage debates are concerned. Right now the UCC church in North Ca…
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…ch. We are the Church.” While a single example, this statement reminds us, today, on World AIDS Day 2008, that throughout its history, AIDS/HIV has been entangled with religion—for good and ill. As we move into the second quarter century of the pandemic, this entanglement continues. Twenty-first century religion has been shaped by and has shaped the AIDS/HIV crisis; they continue to shape one another. Today, we often hear about this entanglement i…
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…he order is hard to predict, especially in the wake of the House’s passage today of “Trumpcare,” also known as the American Health Care Act, which effectively guts the ACA, including its “preventive care mandate.” According to numerous reports, the version passed by the House today not only repeals protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions, but actually adds to the list of pre-existing conditions that someone can be denied health insu…
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…any form of religious progressivism. Yet the original social gospel, like today’s progressives, also faced the challenge of defining its mission to the larger culture, specifically, how best to engage important political and economic interests of the time. This engagement led the movement to raise a number of questions about its mission. For example, was the social gospel’s primary objective to cast a wide ideological net to create a broad coalit…
Read More…nfamous kill-the-gays bill has been reintroduced in Parliament. The bill stalled last year in the face of international pressure, including condemnation from the U.S. State Department, but its backers have never given up. The legislation and the violent anti-gay rhetoric promoted by its supporters have been part of a wave of anti-gay campaigns in Africa backed by American anti-gay evangelicals. That campaign has had deadly consequences: just over…
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…ow, for example, that exposure to ultraviolet radiation triggers mutations today, then we can also assume it would have had a similar influence on creatures living hundreds of millions of years ago. Meyer observes that, today, when we see something intricate and functional—such as a computer or a can opener—we assume that it’s been designed by some intelligence. Consequently, extrapolating from present observations into the past, the design of an…
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