Religion Dispatches
…[Editor’s Note: After this post went up I received an email from Focus on the Family’s newsletter, Citizenlink, telling the story of a woman whose former wife is seeking custody of their daughter, Isabella. Citizenlink…
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…s came from all sectors. “They’re pandering to the Jewish octogenarians in South Florida,” or “they’re pandering to the Christian Zionist evangelicals.” Each may be true but neither answers the question satisfactorily. As for the Jewish Floridians, many will not vote for Obama anyway, not because he doesn’t love Israel enough but because he is black. This is the dirty little secret of a certain generation of American Jews. American Jewry has spent…
Read More…craft of great size shall be visible within your skies. It shall be in the south of your hemisphere and it shall scan over many of your states. We give to you the name of Alabama. It has been decided that we shall remain within your atmosphere for the minimum of three of your twenty four hour periods. During this time there will be much commotion upon your earth plane. Your highest authorities will be intruding into ‘our’ atmospherics that surroun…
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…: So, how does one teach on US Religion (or any course in religion) in the South? In my experience—and based on stories you have told me, maybe even more-so at the University of Tennessee—classes include quite a few conservative evangelicals who take very particular, even rigid, stances toward the subject. I imagine that it’s a bigger factor in the Bible Belt than in most other places. How do you deal with this? For example, my New Testament class…
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…istian Right has been ‘spreading out’ across the states, especially in the South, Midwest, and West. Thus, Christian conservatives have become a staple of politics nearly everywhere.” In short, John McCain’s personal preferences were irrelevant: his route to the presidency was only viable with the help of Christian right leaders he’d all too recently attacked. So, McCain was politically compelled to mend fences, first with Jerry Falwell, then with…
Read More…We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost… When attempting to sort through the controversy over Wright’s remarks, there seems little reason to linger over the comments about September 11, which do not differ greatly from those offered by a noted whi…
Read More…ailure to earn the support of conservative evangelicals, especially in the South Carolina primary. McCain’s success this time around is surprising considering the centrality of the religious right in the Republican electoral coalition. Some observers, however, including Dionne and former White House insider David Kuo, whose book Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction (Free Press, 2006) exposed the Bush administration’s instrumental…
Read More…iquitous nature of injustice. This is particularly true among middle-class African Americans in the south side of Chicago. For those who have played by the social rules yet still feel alienated, angered, and victimized by racial disparities within the health, educational, economic, and criminal justice systems, Dr. Wright lets them know that they are not crazy. And while many (like Senator Barack Obama) may reject the political impracticality of h…
Read More…ance.” A dear friend of mine lost her son several years ago in Greenville, South Carolina. He was hit so hard by his assailant that his brain stem separated from his brain. He died in the hospital hours later. The last thing he heard was his attacker calling him “faggot.” He was only 20-years-old. His attacker spent only one year in jail and is currently out of jail and serving three years of probation. The passage this past week of a measure addi…
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…ears that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor, he would be deployed to the South Pacific, survive the war, and return home to raise a family. The war he liked to talk about (at least with me) was made up of football games with his friends, cribbage in the trenches, and the exotic surprises that Australia and the Philippines held for an Oregon farmboy. Of course, there was a good deal more to his war, but he didn’t care to talk about that. He was a…
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