Religion Dispatches
…mselves] at the new moon, bathing in the river, and invoking the heavens.” Today, scholars such as Harvard’s Kimberley C. Patton provide theologically informed readings of many traditional claims about the religious awareness of other beings. Patton deals, for example, with “ways in which animals are believed to possess a unique awareness of holiness,” noting that “in many religious worlds…mutual intelligibility obtains between God and animals tha…
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…hurch and community organizing in which we live. Progressive Christianity today, by whatever name, is characterized by an ethos of egalitarian civility that makes it allergic to developing strong leaders. It works in a coalitional style and speaks in the voice of an improvisational ensemble, or as James Wind says, an always-evolving chorus. We don’t want anyone to presume to lead us or speak for us, and we tend to be reticent about our faith. On…
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…ening the hand of the poor and needy” is regarded as socialist anathema by today’s Tea Party zealots, the Tea Party has more in common with the Sodomites than do gays or lesbians. Likewise in text after text after text, Sodom’s wickedness is connected to cruelty, injustice, and deceit—never homosexuality. Jeremiah 23:14: I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem a horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the…
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…and accepted responsibility for my actions. I was sorry then and remain so today.” From the cover of Andy Savage’s forthcoming book, which has been put on hold by the publisher. “Again, I ask for forgiveness from her and everyone involved. When this happened twenty plus years ago, I did everything I knew to do under the counsel I was given to cooperate with those involved, repent of my sins, take responsibility for my actions and seek forgiveness….
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…cient for most people in their contemplation of supernatural other-spaces, today more and more people rely upon mediated worlds for this sense of voluntary displacement. So to see Manhattan itself go belly-up after the storm, to watch how carnal we become when met with loss of power, has been a sobering and a saddening experience. All of this has made me think more squarely about how inured we have become to screens as the mediator of our imaginat…
Read More…nus the exemption, and Obama embraced the presence of religious leaders at today’s White House signing. Someone in the audience even shouted “amen!”, to which the president responded, “Amen. Amen. . . . Got the ‘amen’ corner here.” The Rev. Canon Susan Russell, Senior Associate Minister at All Saints Church in Pasadena, California, attended the White House signing today. Ball, said Russell, “got it wrong.” Ball cites the abandoned effort of Sojour…
Read More…istory, there have always been rivulets of Jews who accept Jesus, and that today’s messianics perpetuate these, when the outside monies they now attract started burgeoning only suddenly in the 1970s, as the turn of the millenium neared, with its recurring hope for the Second Coming and even the end of the world.” When, he asks, “in previous history have rivulets of Jewish messianics received such largesse?” He concludes, “Today the mask is coming…
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…-called “Religious Right.” “What scares me is that Christianity in America today sees nothing wrong with being allied with political conservatism,” he told The Progressive magazine 10 years ago. “Conservatives are people who worship at the graves of dead radicals. Stop to think about that. The people who started this country, George Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, these were not conservatives; these were the radicals of the time. In fact, conserv…
Read More…lorification of man on the mind. Christopher Lasch’s question is as urgent today as it was when he posed it 18 years ago in his book The True and Only Heaven How does it happen that serious people continue to believe in progress, in the face of massive evidence that might have been expected to refute the idea of progress once in for all? Reitan raises in separate chapters the key arguments that atheists have used or attacked, including theories of…
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…age crafted outside the immediate experience of the audience, social media today is by its nature participatory, interactive, collaborative, distributive, and, importantly, integrated deeply into the day-to-day experience of users. Updating a Facebook status or tweeting a question about the nature of the Trinity (it happens!) is not a break in the action, an interruption of demands of daily life. These activities are intimate parts of contemporary…
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