Religion Dispatches
…t a book to be engaged with. My goal is to help people find their bearings today without religion or God. What alternate title would you give the book? Finding our Bearings without Religion. How do you feel about the cover? It exudes energy and commands attention. An earlier version, also striking, put the reader into nature. I like my publisher’s taste, which was to make the book as current as possible. Is there a book out there you wish you had…
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…ization that it has been, and continues to be, primarily a political issue promoted by religious groups with a far larger agenda than simply abortion—and driven by an energy that goes far deeper into the racial history of the country than most Americans want to admit. After the Civil War in the 1860s, the white South was able to keep former black slaves from full participation in society for another 100 years. Only in the 1960s were African Americ…
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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 influence one another. Today, we often hear about this entangleme…
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…is the complete insulation from the consequences of bad policy enjoyed by today’s jeunesse doree. Not only do they not have to go to the burning deserts of Iraq or to the chilly forbidding heights of Afghanistan: they don’t even have to know anything about the lives of those who are going. The idea that they might experience any Fallows-like guilt or have any second thoughts about their degree of insulation is simply not an issue today. This extr…
Read More…there: In 1967, there were perhaps fewer than 200 mosques in the country. Today, there are likely more than 2,000. In 1967, the single largest Muslim organization in the United States was probably Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam, a group that was not accepted as legitimately Muslim by many Sunni and Shi‘a religious authorities. Today, the sectarian profile of Muslim America roughly mirrors that of the rest of the Muslim world. The majority of M…
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…seem to us now, sustained sovereign states for centuries; for many Muslims today, that past gives the Muslim a sense of security and dignity which is otherwise painfully lacking—and demands recovering. The continuing presence of Western armies in Muslim countries only supports their point. The deep disagreement over the place of Islam in society, and the relationship of personal to collective morality, partially explains the underperformance of ma…
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…ationist, hegemonic WASP politics that son Franklin Graham and many others promote today. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Franklin Graham simply represents a more strident version of 1950s Billy Graham. It’s not surprising then, that Billy Graham will finish his race in the United States Capitol next week. House Speaker Paul Ryan has indicated that Billy Graham will lie in state in the Capitol from February 28 to March 1st. For the most…
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…rge reproduction of the front page of the Palestine Post (the precursor of today’s Jerusalem Post) of May 14, 1948, which reads: “State of Israel Declared.” When Jerry Falwell died in May of 2007, he was eulogized by leaders of the American Jewish community as “a dear great friend of Israel.” Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson made the case for Israel so consistently and unequivocally that today, among the conservative ev…
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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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…le, when, in discussing evangelical pushback against outgoing Christianity Today editor Mark Galli’s December 2019 op-ed, “Trump Should Be Removed from Office,” Geddis remarks, “That letter rebuking the Christianity Today editorial was signed not only by leaders of typical evangelical organisations, but also by political figures such as former Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and a number of prosperity-gospel televangelists.” Meanwhile, G…
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