Religion Dispatches
…whose establishment or “rebirth” he and many fellow evangelicals saw as a sign of God’s hand moving in history. Evangelicals and Jews Become Partners Today, it’s commonplace for the Christian Right to invoke the idea of “Judeo-Christian values,” and for America to once again become “one nation under God.” Overlooking the pesky fact that that phrase was only added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, they insist that both the Christian and Jewish…
Read More…s.” After the parents met with the school board, Hensley was told she must sign a letter of apology, which she refused, arguing that the presented letter contained factual errors. She was later reassigned to teaching a remedial language arts class. Hensley filed a lawsuit against the district saying that her First and 14th Amendment rights had been violated. According to Hensley’s complaint, the parents demanded she publicly admit she demonstrated…
Read More…ethodist Building (known to locals as “the God box”) on Capitol Hill had a sign supporting the DREAM Act. (h/t Religion News Service). “After all,” Phillips adds, “what can you say about a church that considers Hillary Clinton to be a member in good standing?” Phillips goes on to call the church “the religious arm of socialism” because it supports “illegal immigration” and “socialist health care;” in sum, “a socialist wish list.” After the Senate…
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…d save those we love. The ashes are not mere symbol; they are not a public sign of our piety (exactly what Jesus warns against in Ash Wednesday’s gospel reading). Instead, the ashes are as real as it gets—a sticky, gritty, grimy smear plastered to our foreheads, precisely on the same spot that the oil of baptism was applied. For Christians, the juxtaposition is as liberating as it is instructive: we are dying, yet we live. Death may be at our door…
Read More…, not the devaluation itself. Women, and concern for women, are just pawns for the Islamophobes and for the fundamentalist Christian patriarchalists in their efforts to promote their agendas. In fact, both promote the devaluing of women that leads to the very examples they decry….
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…t for LGBT equality in the denomination, when David Bailey Sindt held up a sign asking, “Is anyone else out there gay?” Part of the reason for 10A’s success this year is the answer to that question: Yes, there are gay people out there. As Rev. Tricia Dykers-Koenig, national organizer for Covenant Network of Presbyterians, said, “People are changing their minds about the morality of same-sex relationships. It comes from knowing more LGBT people.”…
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…m The Villages Charter School. The governor’s staffers handed the students signs that read, “No to Earmarks” and “Thank You Governor Scott” that were designed to appear handmade. When the mayor of The Villages opened the ceremony and welcomed everyone saying, “the signing of the budget is an exercise in representative democracy and we’re happy to have it right here in The Villages,” he apparently didn’t know that about twenty members of the Villag…
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…nes of rationality. For you (his brother), however, it is precisely that—a sign of irrationality. The two brothers inhabit two different worlds: in one world gods, angels, and miracles exist; in the other they don’t. So, if the two brothers talk about God, they talk about two fundamentally different things: Jimmy talks about God like he talks about his brother; his brother, on the other hand, talks about God like he talks about Dr. Jekyll or Hamle…
Read More…e he claimed American pastors like Rick Warren and Robert H. Schuller were promoting a mix of Christianity and Islam he labeled “Chrislam.” A new survey from Pew finds that evangelicals in the northern hemisphere are pessimistic about their influence on life in their countries while those in the southern hemisphere see their influence growing. American evangelicals were some of the most glum about their ability to influence the country.At least on…
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…. On the one hand, he was ardently opposed to the Oslo peace accords Rabin signed; on the other, he makes sure to tell the reader how the two met on several occasions and that the late Prime Minister appreciated the televangelist’s “support” for Israel. But, as the subtitle of the book makes clear, the most important thing about Rabin’s assassination at the hands of a Jewish extremist is, in Hagee’s view, its role in setting biblical prophecy “on…
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