Religion Dispatches
…lity and faith… The Christian tradition since Thomas Aquinas is based on a combination of faith informed by reason. If the latter is diminished, then we are reduced to varying forms of theocratic terrorisms, where the stoning of heretics and the burning of witches would still be commonplace. In fact, if we were today to adhere to a literalist rendition of the Christian scriptures, the 21st century would be a deeply troubling place, and the list of…
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…of diversity among the unaffiliated as well. It is here that the visually-compelling data-blending may become more obfuscating than just confusing. Among the affiliated, race is distinguished. So, you can see that older religiously affiliated are more white. But there’s no comparable distinction within the unaffiliated, who are mostly white as well (71%). The way the data is presented—mixing affiliation and race—can make it appear that the unaffi…
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…en hired and assigned to the effort. Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution last October, Bishop William E. Lori, chair of the Ad Hoc Committee, described LGBT equality and access to reproductive care as “serious threats to religious liberty,” that “represent only the most recent instances in a broader trend of erosion of religious liberty in the United States.” The problem, he went on, is like a disease t…
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…ing Holocaust images. And I wonder if we haven’t, contra-Jennings & co., become excessively “judicious” in the elimination of images of death from our society. Voyeuristically, we can aim our web browsers at www.grim-reaper.org, which offers “one-stop shopping for the morbid mind.” Alongside videos of autopsies and embalming procedures, they sell a couple documentary videos on September 11—one of which donates proceeds to the “Twin Tower Fund,” s…
Read More…ent should be run by Christians in order to cleanse the world for Christ’s coming. Power encounters such as exorcisms must be done to cleanse not only people, but cities and communities; and those who participate in this will also lead in the new Reformation. As a result, you will see someone like Rod Parsley, who is generally thought of as a Word of Faith preacher, discussing his own spiritual debt to Wigglesworth and affirming his adherence to t…
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…ens his hearings into “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response” this week, these conspiracy theories will take center stage in the halls of the United States Congress in the latest and most blatant McCarthy-esque twist in the rising level of Islamophobia in the United States. Anti-Muslim diatribe and activity have reached what Marshall Breger, a law professor at Catholic University, an Orthodox J…
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…ely that outside of RD, we’ll ever hear much about those voters’ religious commitments, or how increasing secularization among young Blacks shapes the community’s politics. Jack Jenkins had a chapter on it in his new book, and that’s all I’ve seen. Chrissy: Ha! I watched a lot of cartoons from my parents’ generation when I was a kid. And yes, I think that good religion journalism ought to be covering mainline and progressive as well as authoritari…
Read More…7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1100211495223218176&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F02%2F26%2Fhealth%2Fabortion-bill-trump.html However, his statement in Green Bay differs from the earlier statements which deliberately misconstrue laws in order to blame governmental officials for what could happen to babies. In Green Bay, Trump is telling the story of a crime which he claims has already occurred. The New York Times, Vox, MSNBC, and…
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…7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1181395164499070976&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Fculture%2F2019%2F10%2F9%2F20906371%2Fellen-degeneres-george-w-bush-controversy Jamil, baffled about the outcry, took to Twitter to defend her friend and admonish her audience that kindness was a virtue, and that DeGeneres had made “an incredibly necessary point” when she argued that we should be kind to those “who don’t share the same beliefs.” In fact, Jamil…
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…tectionism, and “criminal” immigrants, over the last few years Trump has become visibly more comfortable using language that more directly appeals to the conservative, mostly white evangelicals and radical traditionalist Catholics who represent his base, and with whom he has surrounded himself. To those with “eyes to see,” Trump’s first clear appeal to the Christian Right came in his use of the phrase “failing government schools” in the midst of h…
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