Religion Dispatches
…rting him among the centrists and independent voters he will need in large numbers to win. His expression of confidence in her credentials echoes precisely what I worried about immediately after the vice-presidential debate. “She has more executive experience than Senator Biden does,” McCain quipped. Note the term: executive. By that same logic, Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than is Senator McCain himself. And what the Senator fail…
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…e for the future in the evangelical church? I think we’re going to see the numbers continue to shrink and people leave the church, but within the next 10 to 15 years things will change. We’ll see more affirming churches, more people asking questions and people’s faith developing in ways we haven’t seen before. The evangelical church will dig its heels in on tradition over love and will have a hard time. But, you never know what will happen tomorro…
Read More…were more mundane and predictable: Section Two redefined how we distribute numbers of representatives state-by-state, by “counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed”; and Section Three excluded from future service any member of the government who had previously sworn an oath of office to the State and then joined the Confederacy in open rebellion. Predictable stuff, really. After winning the War, Washington int…
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…s favor them. 5) …but Christians are divided on same-sex marriage. Similar numbers favor (46%) and oppose (46%) allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally—but attitudes vary significantly by denomination, with white Evangelical Protestants, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses being most strongly opposed, and Unitarian/Universalists, white mainline Protestants, and Catholics most strongly in favor. 6) Americans’ double standard on religious vio…
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…other thing is, this is a personal plea to white clergy—we didn’t have the numbers. White clergy did not respond to this. https://www.facebook.com/publictheologian/photos/a.832371280191875.1073741829.832236016872068/1364676620294669/?type=3&theater What does that feel like for you, as a trans queer Latinx, who is also public theologian and activist working in these spheres? What does that absence from white clergy signal to you and others who hold…
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At a time when increasing numbers of informed audiences in both scholarly and popular circles have begun to recognize African religious cultures and the rich contributions they have made to African diaspora civilizations, Pat Robertson has made another dubious contribution to America’s fascination with the ‘problem of Haiti.’ As Robertson narrates it, in his latest fiction-disguised-as-revelation, “something happened a long time ago in Haiti,” an…
Read More…big tent approach to coverage of American ir/a/religion. But do the Gallup numbers point to new ways we might be thinking about business as usual? Two findings are striking. First: Gallup reported that although Americans felt religion’s influence was declining, many—75 percent—agreed that more religion would be positive for the country. Not surprisingly, churchgoers were most gung-ho about religion’s beneficial impact. But “over half of those who…
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…vangelical polling firm LifeWay Research argues that the nominal Christian numbers are dropping. If those leaving the faith come from the center of the faith, it will leave American Christianity “more sharply defined,” Stetzer argues, along both ends of the spectrum. That in turn probably means we’re in for more contentiousness as the two sides duke it out to define the faith. I’m not a proponent of Progressive Christianity myself. But even as a r…
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…o hell, psychological instability of returning veterans with unprecedented numbers committing suicide, veteran services stretched thin—these are only a few items that come to mind though they only scratch the surface of the psychic, social, and cultural scars inflicted by this war. Historically and across cultures, warfare is often the most religious event in the life of any society. Is it any different here, in America, with this war? The patriot…
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…a much narrower focus on jihad and terrorism. Considering the Gallup poll numbers, which indicate that the more religious a person claims to be, the less tolerant they are of militancy and violence, how do you explain your moving from how Muslims conceive of Shari’ah to a narrower and more securitized frame of Shari’ah, which seems to exclude many Muslim experiences of Shari’ah outside certain crisis areas, like Pakistan and Afghanistan? Structu…
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