Religion Dispatches
…e. Elizabeth McAlister. “From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan: The Evangelical Rewriting of Haitian History” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 41.2 (2012). Available at: http://works.bepress.com/elizabeth_mcalister/37…
Read More…adventures of Eve and Adam and Cain and Abel and Abraham,” she writes. Because she doesn’t really understand evolution, and because she finds the Biblical account so much more compelling, Heffernan opts for creationism. The outrage from science-minded writers isn’t surprising. What’s unfortunate is that there hasn’t been a greater backlash from religious folks. Heffernan’s ideas about science may be ignorant, but the way she talks about religion…
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…to (or, at least, close to) the rhetoric of the “Palestinian exception” to free speech. As Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights have argued, “decision makers cloak their disfavor for Palestine rights advocacy through reference to ‘balance,’ ‘dialogue,’ and ‘civility,’ terms that echo the talking points of Israel advocacy groups.” Even on a panel focused on the definitions and deployment of terms like antisemitism and Islamophob…
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…under the First Amendment. We think it’s time for us all to seek religious freedom for reproductive freedom, and to recognize that persistent efforts to interfere in reproductive decisions is “an infringement of a natural right” in the sense the Virginia Statute warned. Of course, women didn’t share in this natural right at the time—but the right to believe differently than the rich and the powerful as codified in the Statute and the First Amendme…
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…prosperity gospel and how it started. The book talks about how, in earlier times, all agency was relegated to the divine. You can’t do anything on your own, everything is up to God’s will. But in the prosperity gospel, the agency starts with the individual. The prosperity gospel focuses on bettering yourself and harnessing the power of the divine in order to reap benefits on earth. A lot of the churches referenced in this book are megachurches. T…
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…n. Anytime you have a stratified society in which there is a strong divide between elites and masses or between rich and poor, those who find themselves in a disadvantaged position naturally feel resentment. That resentment can be a powerful tool of democratic social change, but it can also be a tool of oppression—depending on where the emotion is directed. Historically, resentment has been the emotion that elites feared the most—because it inspir…
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…battle against the contraceptive mandate dealt more in falsehoods and hysteria than facts or the nuances of Catholic moral theology. Ironically, it took freeing Notre Dame from the mandate for it to realize it had been free all along….
Read More…” Allen said. Bakery General Manager Daniel McArthur said the order was refused because it was not in line with the company’s views. “We considered it, looked at it and decided that it was at odds with our beliefs and was in contradiction with what the Bible teaches,” McArthur said.… “This case raises issues of public importance regarding the extent to which suppliers of goods and services can refuse service on grounds of sexual orientation, relig…
Read More…n. Anytime you have a stratified society in which there is a strong divide between elites and masses or between rich and poor, those who find themselves in a disadvantaged position naturally feel resentment. That resentment can be a powerful tool of democratic social change, but it can also be a tool of oppression—depending on where the emotion is directed. Historically, resentment has been the emotion that elites feared the most—because it inspir…
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…ric. Headlines said he called for a “peaceful resolution” to the conflicts between religious freedom and nondiscrimination. Notably, none of these articles mention either Oaks’ advocacy for a less rigid boundary—“a curtain”—between church and state, or his assertion that Employment Division v. Smith, a 30-year-old religious freedom opinion written by no less than ultra-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, must be overturned. The self-described “mo…
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