Religion Dispatches
…ropean Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict). Arinze is one of only 16 African cardinals–out of 187. Actually, there is a significant ethnic and regional disparity when it comes to people in power in the Catholic Church. For example, while over one-third of Catholics are from Latin America, only 14% of cardinals are from that region. Conversely, half of cardinals are from Europe, while less than a fourth of Catholics are European. Neverthe…
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…the Board members have offered a major blow against our culture’s own post-Enlightenment understanding of self-determination and free will. Texas does not go back two hundred years to the Framers of the Constitution. It goes back 400 years to the Reformation itself, before democracy was even a modern concept. For a full decade, Texas students will not learn the distinct intellectual role the Enlightenment played in contrast to the Reformation. So…
Read More…I may say so, a pretty good lecture. I have been thinking about the Lincoln-of-the-secular-creed during this last week, the bicentennial of his birth. The United States may need a reenactment of the New Deal, but America is also in a moment of Lincoln-mania cultivated, with great skill, by our president. I’m still working my way through all of the Obama-Lincoln articles in the popular media—and I am waiting for the scholarly presses to begin churn…
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…le were appalled,” said one of the students, adding, “especially as lawyers-to-be, who are trained and licensed to practice the law—to disobey that law, that seemed completely counterintuitive to all of us.” Still, some knew what they needed to “regurgitate,” in order to get a good grade. “It was obvious by the substance of the class during the semester the answer that they wanted,” said one of the students. “The majority of people that I am acqua…
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…with how to acknowledge the realities of actual and threatened religiously-motivated violence in the United States. Until now, of course, the elephant in the room has been our double standard, at least since 9/11. We’ve had little difficulty acknowledging religious motivations when Muslims are involved, but it’s been rare to find the word “Christian” modifying terms like “militia” and “terrorism” in mainstream discourse. Faith-Based Terrorism? In…
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…lack Church.” Scholars typically discuss this difference in terms of “other-worldly” oriented churches and “this-worldly” oriented churches, although the lines between the two are far from neat and linear. The first involves churches committed to some version of the social gospel whereby they understand Christian commitment to involve service to community. The latter involves a more rigorous attention to personal salvation as the primary concern o…
Read More…ogy, “your decision not to act [with violence] is where you have power.” Co-founded in 1863 by Ellen and James White and others, amid the religious fervor of mid-nineteenth century America, Adventism grew out of the “Great Disappointment”—when Jesus did not return as prophesied by William Miller, the Baptist preacher, on October 22, 1844. In the wake of the Great Disappointment, Ellen White began having dreams and visions, which led early Adventis…
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