Religion Dispatches
…Period Regardless of the outcome of the presidential election—if Senator Barack Obama wins, expect a spate of “The Religious Right is Dying/Mortally Wounded” articles—the Religious Right will not disappear from the American political landscape in the near or distant future. In fact, if you follow the money, which is what Americans United for Separation of Church and State is doing, you’ll see that “the nation’s leading Religious Right organizatio…
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History was made yesterday, as Barack Hussein Obama was elected president of the United States of America. While “The religious right’s access to power in Washington, D.C. has been seriously diminished,” as the Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State wrote early this morning, even in an Obama administration, expect some or all of the following to take place against the backdrop of a mainstream media giddy with r…
Read More…ell Houses. Will the religious right take a time out from demonizing Sen. Barack Obama to create Halloween Hell Houses this year? You betcha’. Built on fear and based in church-initiated intimidation, Scaremare—the first Hell House project—was started in the late 1970s in Lynchburg, Virginia, by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell. Since then, hell houses have sprung up in all parts of the country. For those unfamiliar with the concept, Hell Houses are fa…
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…he idea of a German policeman killing an unarmed Jewish teenager sounds so anachronistic as to border on 21st-century-impossible. But what if all of the above were true? Wouldn’t it be phantasmagorically obscene and unbearable? And wouldn’t its unbearableness be precisely due to context and history? Because of centuries of horror that Europe inflicted upon the Jews, culminating in a genocide that wiped out a third of the world’s Jewish population?…
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…ive recitation; that a Muslim can make the pilgrimage to Mecca, touch the Kaaba, and still realize that at its base it is, indeed, a meteorite and not a holy rock from God. Maher even goes so far as to claim that “Christians believe” they are drinking the blood of a man who lived 2000 years ago. But he never asks anyone if they believe that. It’s a straw man argument. Even if this theological idea of “transubstantiation” has been written into Cath…
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…ews and World Report named him one of the top 25 leaders in America. Time magazine saw him as one of “Fifteen People Who Mattered Most in 2004.” Completing the trifecta, Newsweek put him on the list of “Fifteen People Who Make America Great.” By these and other measures, the Reverend Rick Warren is an impressive minister. He has created and supports foundations which do much good in the world, particularly among the poor of Africa. He is a person…
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…n a job interview, that you won’t minister to same-sex couples, says Timo Laato, Lecturer at Lutheran School of Theology, Gothenburg, Sweden. The Church of Norway has officially two views on marriage, and gender is seen as irrelevant to a marriage. A pastor should not question the two views. According to a bishop, there is no room for those in the Church, who call the Church’s new doctrine as schismatic, says Rolf Kjøde, Director of Continuing Edu…
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…neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.” On the other end of the spectrum, one of the founders of the populist Chabad movement, the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Sholom DovBaer Schneersohn) who was most influential in bringing Hasidism to the masses, describes political Zionism as an out-and-out denial of central tenets of Judaism; namely that, becau…
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…after the Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, banning state laws against interracial marriage, for Mississippi to amend its constitution and remove the amendment prohibiting miscegenation. Loving nullified all state laws in 1967, but Mississippi clerks and courts refused to perform or honor interracial marriages for years after. Even in 1987, a bare majority of 52% of Mississippians voted to remove the language from the state constitutio…
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…leased a global “Gay Happiness index,” placing Iceland at the top and Uganda at the bottom of 127 rated countries. Last Friday, HBO’s Vice broadcast “A Prayer for Uganda,” a documentary on the harmful impact that American evangelical anti-gay activists like Scott Lively have had in that country. IDAHOT Commemorations for International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia were held on and around May 17. In Chile, more than 50,000 people joined th…
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