Religion Dispatches
…y—apparently jealous of Greaves and the media attention he’s received. For most, the year of Satanism has been either a sign of the apocalypse or a source of hilarious news items. But Greaves says their goal is to change the “socio-political dialogue.” For scholars of law and religion, this has been an unprecedented series of events that has forced a conversation about the first amendment and what we mean when we talk about “religion.” Here’s a mo…
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…e Bakker’s Evangelical Empire John Wigger Oxford UP August 2017 What’s the most important take-home message for readers? PTL helps to explain the persistent connections between religion and popular culture in American life, a connection that runs deeper than politics alone. PTL grew so quickly because of its embrace of consumer and celebrity culture, much of it through the prosperity gospel, but along the way the money and fame undermined the reli…
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…What do the Christians believe? We are witnessing what could be one of 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 t…
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…ian theology. The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is also one of the most hotly contested theological issues in ecumenical dialogue between East and West, right up there with papal primacy and the filioque (the “and the son” part of the Nicene Creed)—two issues that helped drive the split in the first place. In light of this history, consecrating two countries with overwhelmingly Orthodox majorities to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, particula…
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…say it is a source of his collectivist, even Marxist, worldview. And it demonstrates his lack of commitment to the “quintessential American concept” of individual rights. Barton’s theory boils down to this: if it weren’t for revolution-supporting preachers and their doctrine of individual salvation, individual rights would not have been incorporated into our founding documents. If it weren’t for those preachers, he says, America today would be mo…
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…hodox world. Just a couple of months ago, two of the country’s largest and most influential Orthodox organizations, the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union, co-sponsored America’s first National Jewish Child Abuse Prevention Week. There’s nothing to suggest that sexual abuse is any more or less prevalent in the Orthodox community than anywhere else; but there are a number of peculiarities to Orthodox Jewish life that have made the…
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…ious control of family law; • and religious control of public education. Almo*]}*st half of the countries of the world have laws or policies that penalize blasphemy, apostasy, contempt of religion, or religious “hate speech,” according to the new analysis by Pew. Of the 198 countries studied, 32 (16%) have anti-blasphemy laws, 20 (10%) have laws against apostasy, and 87 (44%) have laws against the defamation of religion, including hate speech against…
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…emphasis of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on “wellness,” the law requires most insurance plans to cover preventive health care services without co-pays. Government regulations spell out which services are covered, and among women’s preventive services are all FDA-approved contraceptive methods and sterilization procedures, along with patient education and counseling. Since the regulations were announced, the “contraception mandate” has been the c…
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…d had a quota of how many black students it would accept) proved to be the most damaging to my psyche. For the subsequent three years, in a million PTSD-inducing ways, I would be regularly reminded that my Black life was either worth very little or that it was, in no uncertain terms, altogether “sinful.” Obviously it wasn’t always the overt-racism that communicated such idiocy, like being called a nigger to my face by white men who claimed to have…
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…devout man declaring the salvific dimensions of the cross. But perhaps the most telling revelation was when he said, “I’m not religious. I, personally, love Jesus and that was my salvation.” That these two diametrically opposed statements came out of Bieber’s mouth one after the other could again be fodder for mockery to his detractors. Finding salvation in Jesus is the definition of being a Christian and Christianity is, for better or worse, a re…
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