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Turn On The News: This Isn’t a Split, It’s a Tiny Sliver of Conservatives Walking Out the Door — Introducing A New Media Criticism Column

…If I can get comfortable with the idea that religion shouldn’t be given a free pass, reporters can surely get there. Which brings us, unfortunately, back to Kathryn Post’s piece. I’m afraid it doesn’t pass many of the tests laid out above. The trouble starts immediately, with the headline: “Reformed Church in America splits as conservative churches form new denomination.” The first two paragraphs then inform us that 43 out of 1,000 congregations…

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Milquetoast Liberal Religion Won’t Challenge Conservative Values: A History Lesson

…advantage of the crisis to restructure the economy in favor of the radical free market. It was this period—the end of the 1960s and early 1970s—when the business community embarked on a war of ideas to take back the country from the “radicals” who had been undermining faith in the free market. One of their targets for conversion was the country’s religious leadership. Using both the carrot (invitations to all-expenses paid weekend retreats where t…

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Why Won’t Conservatives Call Gay-Bashing a Hate Crime?

…what some opponents of the Mathew Shepard Act have claimed, people remain free to harbor and even promulgate heterosexist and homophobic beliefs. But to admit that gay-bashing is a hate crime is to admit that it is fueled by broader cultural forces and teachings. It is to take a step toward admitting that what is being taught by some religious communities—perhaps even one’s own—may play a role in promoting real evil. It is to take a step toward a…

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Is Pope Francis Yogaphobic?

…lity courses, yoga courses, or zen courses, but none of those things would free the person to be like a child of God. Only the Holy Spirit, according to Francis, has the power to break the hardness of the heart and make it docile toward God and free to love. Given the frequent Catholic and evangelical yogaphobic moments in recent history, I asked myself if the Pope’s remarks were yogaphobic, but I concluded that yogaphobia did not appear to be at…

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RDPulpit: Obama Missed the Hope in State of the Union Address

…on faith have been desperate to suppress this insight for decades. God is free, and in that freedom, for the poor. That there is the possibility of change, that the bubble has burst and the financial certainties are on the brink of collapse, that the numbness and despair have been pierced—all of this should be evidence for the faithful that God is “operating under a new plan.”  This is not the hope Joe Hill famously derided as “pie in the sky, by…

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Beverly Cleary, Author of the Ramona Series, Understood Children, Shoes, School, Words, and How it Feels to be Heard, or Misunderstood

…arted the third grade . . . Grown-ups did not understand that summers were free from grades.” She also catches grown-ups speaking earnest nonsense. Virginia Lee Burton’s 1939 classic Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel may be about, as her teacher tells her, “digging the basement of the town hall,” but Ramona knows that her pressing question, namely, “how did Mike Mulligan go to the bathroom when he was digging the basement of the town hall?” stand…

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How U.S. Conservatives Conjured the Jesus of Their Dreams

…s many historians oversimplify by identifying Calvinism as the Ursprung of free market capitalism, Keddie more precisely singles out Arminianism, the deviation from orthodox Calvinism that reserved some room for human effort in the work of salvation. He pinpoints the crucial contribution of Hugo Grotius, whom the Dutch government locked up for his Arminian heresy, in laying the legal groundwork for unrestricted pursuit of private gain and the expl…

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The “Religious Freedom” President is Gutting the Rest of the 1st Amendment

…of the others. The new administration has launched aggressive attacks on a free and fair press, freedom of speech, and the right of the citizenry to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. One could even argue that he’s weakened the free expression of religion (or lack thereof), particularly as it refers to contraception, LGBT rights, and any non-Christian faith practices. Take the freedom of the press and the r…

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God Promises to Open our Graves: A Theology for the Age of AIDS

…is tall, muscular, usually white, blue eyes, short hair, clean-shaven, and free of blemishes—healthy-looking. With these ideals in mind, is it any wonder that my high school students made the choices they did? Perhaps “Natasha” and “Mark” reminded the “healthy-looking” students too much of human fragility at a time when they perceived themselves to be invincible. Or, on a more mundane level, the sick and ugly ones just were not beautiful enough, a…

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The Lesser and the Greater Pilgrimage

…exuberance. Sorta like skydiving tandem before following up my lessons for free-fall skydiving. That way I can focus on the details I am trying to learn now and be better prepared. As far as umrah, the lesser pilgrimage, goes; it stands to reason that people can visit the ka’abah any time of the year. And so it is. There are still the same ihram prescriptions. There are still certain rites that should be performed. But unless a journey to Makkah c…

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