Religion Dispatches
…tually becomes neo-liberal economics. The Reformation was a product of and promoted a communications revolution in terms of print. Conservative Protestants have always been the first to understand the significance of new technologies. I think the reason for that is the Protestant preoccupation with the Word, and they get the Word out however they can. For a long time it was print. In the early 20th century it was radio. By the forties it was telev…
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…dopted the 1997 law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations.” Promoted by the Orthodox Church and directed specifically against new religious movements, the law distinguished between the four traditional faiths—Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism—and non-traditional groups such as Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Latter-Day Saints, and Hare Krishnas. In order to maintain legal status, churches had to prove that they had…
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…y no other artist has garnered a significant write-up in both Christianity Today and The New Yorker. He called himself the “Painter of Light” and then trademarked the phrase. He includes a Christian fish (ichthus) above his signature—but he’s also alleged to have urinated on a Winnie the Pooh figure at Disneyland, among other socially unacceptable activities. The paradox of Kinkade and his impact on culture is encapsulated in a posthumous statem…
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…King was a Personalist: when distinguishing between moral laws and social codes, he believed (in theory at least) that dignity, respect, choice, equality, and subjectivity were the moral rights of all human beings. However, these rights were stymied by social codes, which led to all sorts of disparities, including but not limited to racial and economic injustice, which King argued were morally evil. Thus, King’s dream was a public censure of Amer…
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…rove, and has already been proven, unlike Ike having to prove a negative.) Today, Obama denounced “sideshows and carnival barkers,” adding, “we don’t have time for this kind of silliness.” Which is exactly why he shouldn’t have bothered caving into their ridiculous demands; within moments Joseph Farah of WND decreed the release “raises as many questions than [sic] it answers.” That sideshow, although driven in recent weeks by Donald Trump, was dri…
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…his head, killing him. Cain and Abel’s remarkable argument is little known today, but it is not a mere blip on the radar of biblical interpretation. It exists in different versions in other Targum manuscripts, including fragments found in the Cairo Geniza, showing that it was discussed, revised, and transmitted across Jewish communities. And it is representative of a concern with justice we can see in many other texts where Jewish interpreters gra…
Read More…e politics that has shaped many of us makes what we say very irrelevant to today’s issues. I think a good part of the church is in denial as to how this country has really changed. I never heard of this Dearborn Awakening event that happened until I read your piece today, but I want to offer an apology for this speaker that lied and confused people. I offer this as a Christian and student of the Word that is called by God to obey and not simply kn…
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…ation. As a Muslim, I’m exhausted. You may think that what plagues Muslims today is a rowdy minority of gung-ho militants in the desert of Iraq and Syria. I think our problem is more subtle than that. We have convinced ourselves, and others, that we live on a planet apart as perfect Muslims who speak exclusively as agents and caretakers of their faith. The spectrum of our visibility is narrow: we are either the fanatic bad Muslim or the sanitized…
Read More…nt guarantees equal protection to fertilized eggs. At his press conference today, Santorum alluded to reproduction and procreation by praising the family as “the moral enterprise that is America,” and by specifically thanking the 19 Kids and Counting Duggars for campaigning for him. It might have sounded like a standard political homage to wholesome family life, but to anyone who knows Santorum’s views, it was an homage to uber-fertility. As Kathr…
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…ours, recorded four albums, and performed 248 sold-out shows in Las Vegas. Today she’s worth more than $60 million. While everyone knows about Spears, few know—and even fewer discuss—the role religion has played in her life. Like Katy Perry, who was once a Contemporary Christian Music artist, Spears has deep roots in white American evangelicalism. Born and raised in the Bible Belt and surrounded by conservative evangelical Protestants, Spears grew…
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