Religion Dispatches
…alism that Harvard has traditionally espoused. JUNE In June, Greaves did a number of interviews taking aim at Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and his efforts to ban gay marriage and limit access to abortion. A native of Detroit, Greaves called Snyder “an idiot governor.” He discussed campaigns that would invoke the free exercise clause to challenge Snyder’s legislation, including the assertions that gay marriage is a Satanic sacrament and that Satan…
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…American religion and culture, which meant that they had no shortage of supporters and critics on either side, particularly with regard to the prosperity gospel. What alternative title would you give the book? My working title was Pressed Down, Shaken Together, which comes from one of the favorite Bible verses of prosperity preachers at the time, including Jim Bakker. But my editor thought that it was too obscure for most readers and I’m sure she…
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…f the most destructive scandals ever in the Catholic Church. A flurry of reports and allegations have been in the news recently of institutional authorities covering up or taking lightly charges against priests who have taken a vow of celibacy and are accused of sexually abusing children and misusing their power. Although it is not yet clear how Pope Benedict XVI will deal with these charges in the long run, his recent homily referring to the “pet…
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…frequently seen the Catholic Church operate in the role of aggressor or opportunist. This history begins roughly in 1054, the formal break in communion between the Latin Western Christian Church, headed by the Roman papacy, and the four historical patriarchates of the Eastern Church. The split was preceded by a series of disputes concerning both church governance and theology, chief among them contention over the pope’s claim to universal authori…
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…faith through a prism of American nationalism? Not to mention the growing number of Americans without any religious commitment? Beck tells us, “you must fall to your knees and you must reconnect with God. He is not asking you. He is commanding us as a people to get behind Him. He will right the wrongs. We will have to pay a price because we lived outside of His laws. We will have to pay a price, but every day we don’t get behind Him, the price ge…
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…ss prevalent in the Orthodox community than anywhere else; but there are a number of peculiarities to Orthodox Jewish life that have made the reporting of abuse less common than in society at large. “I think the subject of abuse is probably the same in any religious community,” says Michael Salomon, a Long Island psychiatrist, who has just finished working on an as-yet-unpublished book about sexual abuse in the Orthodox world. “Different religions…
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…ce and more persecution of minority beliefs. The Freedom of Thought 2012 report, which bears a portrait of a manacled Alber Saber on its cover, draws attention to the role of digital and social media in particular, noting that even Facebook “likes” and re-tweets have drawn the attention of some authorities: The trend of prosecuting “blasphemies” shared through social media is most marked in Muslim-majority countries. For example, in addition to th…
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…ed by businesses like Annex challenge the ACA’s contraception mandate on a number of grounds. The most significant challenge invokes the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, claiming that the insurance coverage mandate imposes a substantial burden on the free exercise of religion. Annex Medical lost its claim because the court concluded that the mandate does not impose a substantial burden on religious exercise and in the widely-publicized H…
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…matter must be more than a moment in history, not a marketing ploy or an opportunity for fraudulent inclusivity via corporate statements. Keep that. The dismantling of white supremacy has to extend far beyond “Blackout Tuesday” or it will never work. So what does genuine change look like? Truthfully, no Black person should ever be expected to describe in totality the ways in which they wish to be treated fairly. It’s exhausting to explain and tiri…
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…r prayers. But these ultra-devout performers share a peculiar space with a number of other artists whose personal faiths are inconsequential to their public personae but whose fluency in the holy plays out in, well, mysterious ways. Lana Del Rey’s catalogue runs deep with both religious imagery and sentiment; waves of apostasy crash over moments of divine revelation and then reverse course back into faith again. She may have claimed “God’s dead…[a…
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