Religion Dispatches
…Arabic numbers are called ‘Indian numbers,’ and why, in the West, ‘Indian numbers’ are called ‘Arabic numbers.’ In India they’re just known as numbers. No matter what they’re called, I think we can all agree they make life a lot easier. 2. Coffee Muslims invented coffee, and coffee is a good thing, and no good thing ever dies. At best it goes cold. In fact, one of the reasons coffee took off is because religious Muslims preferred the beverage for…
Read More…uality. We may see the results in those efforts in next year’s hate crimes numbers. Burroway also notes that to keep the numbers in perspective we have to consider population size as well. For example, African Americans make up about 12.4% of the population and there were 819 reported cases of anti-black assaults. The GLB community, on the other hand, comprise maybe around 5.5% of the total population and suffered 712 reported cases of assault. Ta…
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…er” polls. Euler’s identity combines the two most important transcendental numbers with i, which equals the square-root of -1. Leonhard Euler was an 18th century Swiss mathematician. No one knows for sure if Euler actually came up with Euler’s identity, but its weird simplicity has grabbed the attention of mathematicians and philosophers for a long time. The balance and the simplicity of the equation is elegant—and also entirely mysterious. Physic…
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…f handed-down gestures and prayers. The new Pew survey doesn’t tell us why that’s occurring, only that it is occurring, and that it is unstoppable. If we want to find out why, numbers and statistics are only a start. The next step will getting to know the religiously unaffiliated as individual people….
Read More…t given what we’ve learned recently about religious realignments—declining numbers of Catholics, declining numbers of mainline Protestants, declining numbers of evangelicals in the 18- to 29-year-old age group, and increasing numbers of unaffiliated voters, and in particular, atheists and agnostics in the 18- to 29-year-old age group—it seems like a significant shift is underway. A recent Pew survey found that there are now equal numbers of white…
Read More…troubling trend at work in our relationship to Donald Trump. That Trump’s numbers refuse to drop, despite his flagrant displays of disrespect, reveals the extent to which these very elements are at work within our own faith community. Whether it’s 40% or 20% or 5% of us seems, at this point, like so much hair splitting. The unfortunate reality is, Trump may not go away anytime soon. While pundits and pollsters keep themselves busy predicting when…
Read More…d purpose and grow languid and aimless?” In addition to alienating a large numbers of millennials, evangelicals’ boundary policing has led to the ousting of numerous talented scholars from their institutions of higher learning. Fuller’s Daniel Kirk, Eastern University’s Peter Enns (formerly at Westminster Theological Seminary), and Northwest Nazarene University’s Thomas Oord come to mind. The “us” versus “them” disposition clearly benefits evangel…
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…tual home for many students, staff, and distinguished professors. Today the 800-member church is a diverse community of faith including people of various races, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientation, and world-views. Refugees and immigrants compose roughly one-third of the congregation. The church is heavily invested in a wide array of social ministries in the Commonwealth, the U.S., and the world. Below are excerpts from a conversation with the…
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…of one generation being visited down three or four generations (Exodus 20; Numbers 14; Deuteronomy 5; Jeremiah 32). This transmission isn’t mystical but is both genetic and cultural. Just as abuse begets abuse and addiction begets addiction, prejudice begets prejudice. In the Christian Scripture, Paul talks about the need to reckon not just with sinful individual nature but with “principalities and powers,” a theological way of describing the impe…
Read More…at continues over time, we run the risk of the mindfulness movement losing contact with the source teachings. In fact, I fear it has already happened in some instances. That is my main concern about American Buddhism. 2. I also don’t want to give the impression that I’m dissing Asian Buddhism. In my remarks to Max, I wanted to express my frustration that, when I was growing up in Singapore, people in my part of Asia had little access to Dharma and…
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