Religion Dispatches
…capital being used on this project, its failure would set the community in New York, if not the country, back generations. For it to succeed at this point means allowing a project to go forward with which New Yorkers, and especially its Muslims, are not entirely comfortable. Leadership at this point means finding a way out of this morass that does not cost us any more. I think the idea is good, but there is no vision. Show us that vision and get u…
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…igious sentiment lined up on this question on account of my own efforts in New York to call out then-mayor Rudy Giuliani’s especially cruel version of “welfare reform” during the Clinton years, once Clinton had muscled through his Reagan-inflected “personal responsibility” bill in 1996. I was roundly denounced by ostensibly progressive clergy colleagues—and by several ostensibly liberal newspaper columnists—for getting my morals wrong; these disti…
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…it he highlights the signal role Hughes, his predecessor as archbishop of New York, played in the establishment of the Catholic school system in America. Hughes first “struggled to rid the New York public schools in the 1840s of their anti-Catholic bias,” but then went on to found an independent Catholic school system to preserve the faith of future Catholics. Dolan acknowledges in his article that a number of other Catholic bishops shared this c…
Read More…reportedly seeking broader religious exemptions akin to those contained in New Hampshire’s marriage equality law. CNN and other news outlets have reported that the governor can extend the legislative session beyond today’s deadline and has said that he would do so. Today, a Buffalo television station reported that the marriage vote would likely take place tomorrow; it said the governor and Republicans were still working on reaching agreement on ot…
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…mon’s book Wagner writes, “Just as the 1980s was a decade initiating the renewal of the Biblical gift and the office of prophet, the 1990s is shaping up to be the decade in which God is renewing the gift and office of apostle.” Hamon had previously identified the 1950s as the decade of the evangelist; the 1960s as the decade of pastors; and the 1970s as the decade of teachers. Following this gradual introduction, the church’s capacity for the five…
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…cans who sought to counter mainstream institutional forms of religion with new metaphysical movements, such as Christian Science and New Thought. He encouraged his disciples to turn inward, toward the self, rather than outward, toward either Christian or Hindu orthodoxies. Vivekananda responded to Americans interested in wedding metaphysics with modern ideas and values as well as the aim of self-realization. In all of these ways, he appealed to an…
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…outgoing administration. Yet it goes deeper than this. Trump attended the New York church of Norman Vincent Peale in his youth. Peale took the positive affirmations of New Thought and turned them into religious principles and economic maxims. It also goes further than Christianity, connecting to new age thinking found in works expounding the Law of Attraction, such as Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, now in its tenth edition. The Law of Attraction stat…
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…ctional medicine; traditional Chinese medicine and qigong; and more of the new age spirituality diet and health advice that I describe in my book. Move forward to 2021, and health freedom has become a concept that brings together right-wing libertarianism, conservative Christianity, and new age spirituality, especially regarding vaccinations and Covid regulations. Health libertarianism dates to the antebellum period when the concern was bodily fre…
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…mplaint, he shrugged it off, saying that he was not familiar with the term New Apostolic Reformation, even though he knew its founder, Peter Wagner. “I have a lot of confidence in him spiritually,” Garlow said of Wagner. “There are a lot of theological differences here, but we’re focusing on one issue: Jesus,” Garlow added. “It’s not about whether Perry becomes president, it’s about making Jesus king.” Jesus = Obedience Mike Bickle, who runs an or…
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…out in San Francisco where wealthy and well-connected Catholics took out a newspaper ad calling for the replacement of Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone. His efforts to frontload a Catholic high school handbook with anti-gay rhetoric have punctuated his unpopular stint in San Francisco. The smart money is on him being promoted and relocated, as happened with Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law and other clerics who have contributed so actively to the r…
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