Religion Dispatches
…ersonal, theistic sense referring to a transcendent God in heaven and some use it to refer to a pantheistic, immanent power that infuses all of nature? God-hating atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and others of their narrow-minded ilk have made a killing tearing down a God worshiped by childlike, blind followers not rational enough to follow lock-step behind the true idols they worship: science and secularism. God-fe…
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…again headed for the Supreme Court. And I only entertain the argument because of its manipulative use of the rhetoric of religion and “religious freedom.” Why take knowledge and practices supported by the medical establishment and cast them as a “religion”? While this rhetorical tactic might seem absurd on its face, it’s surprisingly effective for the Christian Right’s particular approach to authoritarian politics. When I was about 9 or 10, thank…
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…ding incident. Rather he said it was because of the Bible on his desk. Because he had refused to remove it, citing religious freedom under the First Amendment, he said he was being persecuted. Students organized a rally for him, bringing their Bibles to school in support. A Web site devoted to Freshwater’s cause is called www.bibleonthedesk.com. But Dennis said the issue was never about the Bible on the desk. And nowhere in the lawsuit’s initial c…
Read More…I do not care if there are gods or not.” Whether unconsciously or not, we use the term “religion” as a substitute for “theism” (belief in divinity). This is partly because Christianity, as the dominant religious system in the United States, normalizes a lot of its characteristics. Religion is not the same as “theism,” nor does it require an institutional affiliation. Often, students remark they are “spiritual” and not “religious,” because they th…
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…houses (non-residential chapters) in many large cities in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia. They are often happy to visit classrooms, and they will come in habit to discuss their own perspectives on the order. Because they’re a non-profit organization that gives all of its monies back to the community, some will ask only for the cost of travel; honoraria generally go to the Sister’s house rather than to the individual member….
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…and whom Dreher credits for the title, has himself been caught vacillating between the two notions of tradition. Identifying which notion is operative at any given moment gives us a better grasp of the weaknesses of the argument. As Jeffrey Stout argues in Democracy and Tradition, Yet once the ambiguity of the term “tradition” is made plain, it becomes obvious that the debate over the new traditionalism is best construed not as a debate between tr…
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…the Battle of Shiloh, he simply hoped that “the man that took it will make better use of it than I did.” Ultimately, religion might be a good thing, another soldier said, but there was, he added, “such a thing as having too damn much of it.” Broadening the sources, then, casts some of the ABS’s self-reported successes in a different light. The promise of an institutional history such as this is the depth of the archives available, made more so her…
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…uthority to “execute wrath on the wrongdoer.” He predicts that others will use the previous chapter to argue that Christians should never avenge themselves, “but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” Jeffress is right in reading Romans 12 as a moral instruction to individuals or communities of Christians, and chapter 13 as dealing with systems of government instead. But then he goes off…
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…t the visit and that Episcopal clergy who were present are livid about the use of violence to clear the space. https://twitter.com/DavidBrodyCBN/status/1267653579852185602?s=20 https://twitter.com/Franklin_Graham/status/1267820563679989762?s=20 Of course, more insidious than the direct praise of Trump’s show of Christian nationalist force, which came on the heels of his threat to use the military to restore order in the face of days of demonstrati…
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…n environment,’ which is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.” ~Music Promoter Bill Graham, April 29, 1971 One sentence, spoken by an anonymous “usher” to a maverick producer who then riffed to boisterous audience at the Fillmore East—all the words spoken then say more than any of us digitally-connected folk will be able to say. But as Bill Graham tells it, “you can use sentences and sentences,” so we might as well try. I nominate the Gratefu…
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