Religion Dispatches
…or whether its leaders can continue to engage in gutter politics and get away with it. According to a report in EthicsDaily.com, Richard Land, during a visit to Criswell College at the end of January, referred to Democratic Senator Charles Schumer as “the schmuck from New York.” Land, one of the most prominent leaders of the religious right, is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. At the very lea…
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…litics, far fewer of them realize how the power of money shapes us all the way to the core—shapes the way we think, shapes our innermost hopes and dreams, shapes even our faith. That’s where the ultimate power of money rests, and that is where an awakened resistance has yet to develop. One point you always stress in your work is that everyday workers are much more than the sum total of their wages as units of production. You often speak of working…
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…tion are sourced solely on the claims of the groups themselves. We have no way to independently verify these numbers, so they should be used advisedly. Simply put, the global vision of the NAR is based on their understanding of the Great Commission text of Matthew 28:18-20, with an emphasis on “discipling nations” (28:19). International apostolic networks are therefore necessary for the apostles to lead the five-fold ministry (Apostle, Prophet, Ev…
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…on mainstream, nominally secular platforms. Pundits and columnists find a way to blame deconversion for all sorts of things, and with a confidence that begs a million questions. This isn’t to say that secularization is necessarily or always a force for good. The results are still pending. But assuming that it’s bad is highly irresponsible, and something these same experts would not tolerate if the tables were turned. Chrissy Stroop has examined t…
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…so unbelievably complex, it seems almost impossible, based on the rate and way in which mutations occur, that evolution alone could have gotten us to this point. Consequently, there must be a designer. That’s the argument. Here’s the strategy: take a set of ideas that aren’t actually all that controversial; lay them out in order to fit your theory; then jump to conclusions so gradually that no one notices (maybe not even the writer) that any jump…
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…to predict that either Focus on the Family or the religious right will go away, but it’s very difficult to pass the mantle of charismatic leadership from one generation to the next, especially when the founder is so closely associated with the organization. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, for example, now based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and under the leadership of Franklin Graham, laid off fifty-five people just last week, about 10…
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…ng for republican civil religion, along with his desire to inform a “a new way of being religious within modern culture,” we can easily see how Bellah got the Berkeley secularists running for their guns. What was Bellah, a sociologist, thinking, anyway? Had he forgotten all he learned and taught about first-order religious institutions? What has happened to the role of religious faith communities in articulating “a new way of being religious withi…
Read More…ave been difficult for a text that seems to change slightly each performance, better real-time summaries were needed. Farooqi’s vision for reviving the dastangoi tradition is an admirable one, and his expert staging and acting show the value of the art form in a way simply reading about it does not. The performative aspect of the night was powerful, even if one could not follow the language, as many in the audience could not. With continued shows…
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…not schools, but only a few will actually implement that idea. In the same way, attitudes toward the environment might be less telling than the number of churches that recycle, install solar panels, maintain nature trails, or underwrite environmental activism through their denominations. Belief, in other words, may be less important than the lived faith. Sometimes, the best way to make change is simply to be the change, and trust that it will all…
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…tive sense that another checklist of items would just perpetuate the wrong way of thinking, the wrong way of being. We don’t need another line, the protests seem to be saying. The kind of change we want is deeper. So, sorry, incrementalists like Jay Michaelson, we’re not going to get practical or endorse a political program. We’re going to do this deeper form of protest, because it’s a deeper kind of problem we’re up against. Sometimes this last p…
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