Religion Dispatches
…ement on the group’s Italian-language website declared, “Anonymous decided today to besiege your site in response to the doctrine, to the liturgies, to the absurd and anachronistic concepts that your for-profit organization spreads around the world.” The statement alluded to the burning of heretics, the repression of Galileo, the genocide of Native Americans, aiding Nazi fugitives, and the more recent sexual abuse scandal. Anonymous members attemp…
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…ffiliated were not likely to stay that way as adults, two-thirds of adults today who were raised without religion stay nonreligious. In other words, this is becoming permanent. Circumstances, of course, have changed since the 1970s. Greater rates of religious intermarriage, including marriages between religious and nonreligious couples, mean that children are growing up with differing ideas about religiosity than they had in the past. Gen Xers are…
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…(second) generation attitude toward science and religion. The Battle Lines Today So much for intergenerational histories in the abstract; the juicy stuff always lies in the details. When we survey the opposing armies, what do we see? The forces of science: Those who start from the standpoint of science fall into three main groups: the New Atheists, who argue that the mere existence of religion is a threat to science and weakens it; the “privately…
Read More…ic end from us when he quietly handed power over to his brother Raul. With today’s historic speech, President Barack Obama has radically repositioned the tone and nature of United States policy towards Cuba. These changes include: re-establishing diplomatic ties and opening an embassy on the island; reviewing the current designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism; and increasing commerce, travel, and the free flow of information on the is…
Read More…l scholarship, a yet more widespread commentary on the tendency of many of today’s evangelical leaders to focus on tiny segments of scripture—this might be a valuable service. And might it cement an accommodation not with the evangelicals, but with secular intellectuals? That might be a good thing. The salient solidarity today may not be with the community of faith but among those who accept Enlightenment-generated standards for cognitive plausibi…
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…can’t be applied to the loving, committed gay and lesbian relationships of today. Then you turn to Paul’s letter to the Romans, especially chapters 14 and 15, to propose a way to live together in a “third way” and make the church not just “affirming” of LGBT people, but fully inclusive. I just assumed there was a well-acknowledged category of “disputable matters” (like those found in Romans 14 and 15). I grew up in the Jesus Freak movement of the…
Read More…d only truly became famous in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and is known today as one of the most influential Catholic theologians with regards to evolution in the second half of the 20thcentury. To chart this influence, one need only note Teilhard’s citations by the three most recent Popes. In 2003, Pope Saint John Paul II echoed Teilhard’s vision of a cosmic Eucharist in the encyclical Ecclesia Eucharista: Because even when it is celebrated on…
Read More…gelical,” and in the 1990s, this was certainly not unusual, and isn’t even today. I’m not excusing it, I’m just saying this seems sort of inevitable if Obama is going to pick a conservative evangelical. The question is why he does. Whether this will cause the same uproar that Obama’s selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his first inauguration remains to be seen, but already one can sense some the outcry brewing. But unlike with Wa…
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…from them. Hence the need for a book like Jones’: the truth can’t set you free until you know what the truth is, and the truth is that white American Christians suck at racial equality. It’s a decent hypothesis and response, but simply knowing better rarely solves issues as complex as white supremacy. Social problems are, well, social, and require us to take into account broader patterns and movements. In this instance, it’s worth looking at anot…
Read More…igins of Totalitarianism, which he called “prophetic in its application to today.” Indeed the Manhattan Declaration itself, dressed up as a celebration of “life,” hauls out the trope that abortion is like genocide or holocaust, and claims that LGBT rights infringe on (real) Christians’ religious freedom. In his video released in conjunction with the Manhattan Declaration, Colson called the Declaration “crucially important for religious liberty,” a…
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