Religion Dispatches
…ts makes me tremble. When I consider Darwin, how cats in a town affect the number of flowers, how your face looks as you search out each puddle on your way to school and learn to pull the lip of one sock over so it enfolds the other, then I wonder what it is that I am creating and tremble at the radiance which for a moment passes through you, like light through water making rainbows on a mere piece of paper. Ann Lynn is trained as a psychiatric so…
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…cross, the empty tomb, the via dolorosa. I am not always sure I want to be numbered among Christians; I know there are a number of Christians who aren’t so sure I should be so numbered. My examination occurs alongside my spouse’s examination. She is an ordained Baptist minister who with unspeakable grace regularly braves misogynistic condescension: the assumption among even thoughtful, well-meaning people that her spouse possesses the professional…
Read More…Ya think??? Trouble is, this stuff really isn’t funny. In point of fact, a number of official Catholic statements on sexuality—it’s invariably sexuality and gender they’re riled up about—are downright dangerous. Take, for example, the Ugandan Catholic bishops. As Peter Montgomery reported in RD this week, they joined recently with Anglican and Orthodox bishops “to speed-up the process of enacting the Anti-Homosexuality Law.” This is the bill which…
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…rasteh described in his two books may be an experience common to a growing number of Americans. As the surveys suggest, this process of growing beyond one’s inherited religious tradition has become far more prevalent, sometimes spanning generations. Referred to as the “Nones,” these are people who identify themselves as unaffiliated with any kind of organized religion and are happy to be so. However, this does not mean that Nones have no interest…
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…he movie-making ministry of a Baptist church in Albany, Georgia, has had a number of commercial triumphs. Facing the Giants was made for about $10,000 and grossed $10 million. Fireproof was made for $500,000 and was the highest grossing independent film of 2008, with more than $33 million in ticket sales. The studio’s latest effort, Courageous, released in 2011, is the success people dream about. It was made for $2 million. It brought in $9.1 mill…
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…dst dinosaurs. Bible institutes and Christian colleges continue to grow in number and size, with at least some of them offering degrees in biology and science education in creation-friendly environments. Most of this activity occurs within the nation’s conservative Christian subculture largely invisible to those outside it. When creationists reach beyond the church to challenge the teaching of evolution in public schools—as they have in Kansas, Pe…
Read More…ity, is just one of many measures enacted by the Museveni regime targeting freedom of expression. A vaguely worded Anti-Pornography Act went into law around the same time as the Anti-Homosexuality Act, potentially criminalizing a broad range of expression if authorities deem it to be sexual. The government also has broad powers to monitor electronic communications and regulate NGOs, and President Museveni has recently moved to shut down media outl…
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…nguage in the discipline to be more accepting of homosexuality. They’re outnumbered by the more conservative regions of the church, primarily in Africa and the Philippinnes, and to some extent, the American South. Yeah. That’s the crazy thing about this whole thing. What’s happening in our denomination right now is that we’re realizing we’re a global church. Early Christian missionaries went to the continent of Africa and the Philippines and Chris…
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…eel that they can suffer some serious consequences if they speak out. In a number of cases, someone would start an interaction with me and then go, “Look. I can’t even speak with you.” They didn’t even want to go off the record. Have you received any backlash from some of the subjects profiled in the film? So far, there hasn’t been any backlash. These are very savvy politicians and they got to where they are by ignoring this issue. I would be surp…
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…enation from the speaker: Churchill has allowed the play to be distributed freely, so long as money is gathered at performances for relief work in Gaza. The play’s predictable reception demonstrates how anti-Semitism haunts efforts to find a productive way of responding to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Jews often play the anti-Semitism card too quickly when criticism is leveled at Israeli policy. But critics often fail to recognize when their…
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