Religion Dispatches
If you want to buy the latest copy of Gospel Today down at the local Christian store, you may have to ask the clerk to get it for you from the behind the counter. 100 Lifeway Christian Bookstores across the United States have pulled the magazine off the public racks because of its offensive cover that features something so hideous they don’t want the children, especially the little girls to see: the smiling faces of five ordained female preachers…
Read More…icans, despite the community’s longstanding support for Democrats—just the latest of Trump saying one thing and doing another. Since many Nepalis in the United States are economically disadvantaged, Trump is betting that backlash from the larger Hindu community won’t be strong. Indeed, Nepali Hindus are often left out of the conversation about the future of the Hindu American community, and few Hindu organizations—often more tuned into the concern…
Read More
…rful and dreadful,” and her questioning is what compelled her to write her latest book, Our Lives Matter: A Queer Womanist Theology. I first met Rev. Dr. Lightsey when I was a graduate student at a Forum for Theological Exploration conference. In this conversation about her new book, we talk about the Black Lives Matter movement, its connection to queer womanist theology, and her transformative experiences on the ground in Ferguson and Baltimore….
Read More
…are mostly the sins of white evangelicals, and there will be voices at the latest table like A.R. Bernard, the African-American pastor of a New York megachurch, who calls on evangelicals to focus on “systemic injustices that most concern black evangelicals, such as economic inequality and radicalized policing.” Bernard, to his credit, left Trump’s religious advisory council in the wake of white nationalist violence in Charlottesville. And World Re…
Read More
…r low-income Americans and for increased taxes on the wealthy are just the latest iteration of conservatives galvanized by FDR’s New Deal. And like older generations, many of today’s activists are as much motivated by religion as by politics and economics. Between 1933 and 1936, Roosevelt initiated a series of laws and executive orders to help Americans crushed by the Great Depression. Bereft of jobs, savings and security, millions willingly accep…
Read More…:8-9 to be exact. The poll is in service to the American Bible Society’s latest vanity Bible — the Poverty and Justice Bible that features a cover depicting breaking chains. On the inside you’ll find more than 2,000 verses that deal with issues of poverty and justice bolded by a bright orange highlight. “The Poverty and Justice Bible seeks to challenge the notion that the Bible is outdated and proves that God — not politicians, celebrities or ev…
Read More
…ysical law,” the physicist Stephen Hawking writes in The Grand Design, his latest bestseller, co-written with Leonard Mlodinow, “so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is an illusion.” Similarly, the neuroscientist Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, contends in his new book The Moral Landscape that “no account of causality leaves room for free will.” He adds, “Our belief in free will arises from our moment…
Read More
…e bones of Jews cavalierly are our enemies.” The bones that generated the latest controversy were found during construction of a hospital wing in the city of Ashkelon, on the Mediterranean. Barzilai Hospital, the city’s major medial center, which serves hundreds of thousands of people, is in dire need of a new emergency room. The plan was to build an ER that is bombproof, as Ashkelon lies within the trajectory of Qassam rockets fired from Gaza. T…
Read More…rough and often hateful rhetoric, especially toward gays and lesbians. The latest soft touch is something called “The Civility Project.” Founded by Republican Mark DeMoss, who worked as a volunteer for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, and Democrat Lanny Davis, a longtime Clinton adviser, the project seeks to “get Americans to agree to disagree without being disagreeable.” Those who sign up for the project are asked to take a pledge: I will be…
Read More
…ney as movie star Baird Whitlock is handed the daily script pages from the latest Capitol Pictures production, and he is told a word has been changed. Later in the film, Clooney is delivering a big speech in character and he stumbles over one word. The word that has been switched out? “Passion.” The word he forgets? “Faith.” Moments like this appear in most of their 17 films, but they go by so fast, that for years the debate was whether the Coens…
Read More