Religion Dispatches
…ring of John Freshwater, the Ohio middle-school science teacher who taught students in public school that homosexuality is a sin, evolution is a lie and science can’t be trusted and then burned a cross into a kid’s arm with a Tesla coil. AIG is the young earth creationist apologetics organization which is receiving state tax breaks to build a gigantic Noah’s Ark theme park in Kentucky. AIG’s defense of Freshwater, in which no mention of the cross-…
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As a historian, I challenge students to relate past historical patterns to contemporary religious, political, and cultural realities. In the wake of the Tucson shootings some distinct historical themes emerged that reflect not only the deep political chasms that exist in the country, but the cavernous moral divide as well. And at the center of this divide is the way that different groups understand the concept of redemption in the aftermath of tr…
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…rsities and a Protestant seminary. Religion was no longer a taboo subject. Students at a Shanghai university, mostly non-Christian, saw the poster about my lecture and came to listen out of curiosity. These kinds of exchanges would have been unimaginable twenty years ago. Confucius Faces Mao In another marker of the new, more pluralistic religious landscape in China, President Hu Jintao will visit a Confucius Institute in Chicago on January 21, 2…
Read More…to the Air Force Chaplain Corps College housed there we often get chaplain students attending our services. It’s part of their training to get off the base and attend church services of denominations that they may not otherwise experience. A uniformed young man showed up at one of our services recently and, as part of his assignment, interviewed me on the policies and polity of the UCC after service. Since he was asking a lot of questions, I decid…
Read More…pilgrimages. I find that discussion of American civil religion often helps students grasp the descriptive comparative categories of religion and get outside their own religious frameworks. I’m not the first to note that yesterday’s reading of the Constitution by the new Congress constituted high ritual and that the document took on a sacred status (some even called it a fetish). Yet there was another aspect that clearly dovetailed with more tradit…
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…nt energies devoted to stirring up hateful sentiment is elementary to many students and observers on the subject. In the U.S., hate is a driver constantly shaping and reshaping the religious landscape. Case in point: Just look at how hate brought the religious margins directly into the mainstream, as was recently evident with the planned Qur’an burning in North Florida. While the church itself came from the fringe, it certainly resonated throughou…
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…”—which is intended, presumably, to sound more inclusive. Along with other students and scholars of Judaism I had to come to realize that this irksome and quintessentially American term had considerable political value, if not intellectual or spiritual weight. Like many members of my academic generation I had been influenced by theologian Arthur A. Cohen’s brilliant essay “The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition” (first published in Commentary i…
Read More…g that they have a scientific claim, they now just try to instill doubt in students’ minds about the validity of evolutionary theory. Earlier this month, creationists led by the Louisiana Family Forum, lost a battle over textbooks. A state board recommended the books with actual science and evolution in it. Now, LFF is focused on sneaking creationism into the classroom via state-approved “supplemental materials.” So, while the fight continues and…
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…e denied communion for wearing the rainbow ribbon. Two months ago, college students in Minnesota were denied communion when wearing rainbow pins to church. Also, people from another group, the Rainbow Sash Movement, have been denied communion for wearing a rainbow sash on particular days. How do people feel, wearing the ribbons to church? It’s a scary thing at first. It’s not like wearing any other kind of ribbon because the rainbow stands out and…
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…Princeton lecturer Melissa Harris-Perry sought to explain why many of her students (and her eight-year-old daughter) found Sarah Palin so compelling a figure. “[U]nderestimating Sarah Palin is a mistake of epic proportions,” Harris-Perry concluded, adding that while “Much of the urban East Coast discourse about Palin and The Tea Party women is dismissive and mocking… this perspective ignores that visceral emotions are at least as important as sob…
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