Religion Dispatches
…from its location as a “popular religion.” But lacking a sacred text, law codes, or traditions of written commentary, Voodoo is a marginalized tradition (marked as “primitive,” as if religions evolve along a given trajectory) compared to those “world religions” that come to dominate empires. Until now, Voodoo also lacked a formal institution of authority. The establishment of a national federation of Voodooists and their election, in turn, of Bea…
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…terested in being “open” to one another than in enforcing absolutist moral codes. Only amid such a morally aimless polity could same-sex marriage find such broad acceptance. Having dispensed with old moral absolutes, Craig argues, Americans have adopted what he calls the “new absolutes,” referring to values such as tolerance, openness, and “non-judgmentalism.” Since these values have replaced more traditional values, concerns over the moral qualit…
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…see here. Because we are to pretend drugs don’t exist in the affluent zip codes, because drug abuse cannot be acknowledged in the pursuit of the Christ-centered life. Because everybody is better off if we pretend that problem is … somebody else’s problem. This is from April 2015, before the original bill was considered in the Alabama Legislature. To recap once again: the Briarwood high school was caught trying to sweep a drug problem under the ru…
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…arved himself to death. Turing, who had been instrumental in cracking Nazi codes during the Second World War, “was later imprisoned and chemically castrated for admitting to a consensual homosexual affair.” It is hard not to hear a subtle barb against religion-inspired sexual mores in such a gruesome story. Which is what makes the work of John Polkinghorne so startling and suggestive. Tippett devotes the last chapter to him, and recalls hearing hi…
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…ggie Gallagher—who also worked with the National Fatherhood Initiative—“to promote marriage”; and “gave money to writer Mike McManus to support marriage promotion, while also giving money to McManus’ organization, Marriage Savers (‘a ministry that equips … local congregations to prepare for lifelong marriages …’).” Horn was, coincidentally, a founding board member of Marriage Savers. In addition to the NFI grants, in 2006 the organization received…
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…ng Jesus conveys the same conservative politics, but with different racial codes. O’Reilly served as an Executive Producer for the film, which was made by Ridley Scott’s production company as Fox was absorbing National Geographic in 2015. Importantly, this was one of Scott’s first projects after receiving substantial criticism for hiring white actors to play Egyptians in Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014). In response to this criticism, Scott hired act…
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…disenfranchised and subjugated again (to get a quick sense, Google “Black Codes”). White Supremacist leaders developed a predictable chorus as a PR strategy: the violence was a justified Southern white defense of their liberty against the aggressions of greedy “carpetbaggers” from the North and corrupt Blacks who ruled in the South. These outside agitators were the real instigators and had disrupted otherwise peaceful race relations since “slaver…
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…m the Rune Stone using such techniques as dowsing rods for divining hidden codes within the runes. Some of these new narratives describe large settlements of Christian Vikings who lived in Minnesota for centuries following Leif Eriksson’s arrival in Vinland. There is a ready market for such wild speculation on cable television, but Krueger notes that these tales of ancient European settlers effectively marginalize America’s actual original inhabit…
Read More…ning that several predominately Muslim countries are updating their family codes to reflect pushes for equality and fairness. But this assumes that it’s the laws that lag behind society, which just isn’t always true. Yes, there are men and women who want family laws in their countries to change. But that doesn’t mean society at large wants this, too. Many men are reluctant to dismantle the patriarchal interpretations that work in their favor, and…
Read More…ties, barricading themselves within a bunker because they believed that barcodes on food packaging are Satanic. In a statement, Christian dairy tycoon Boyko-Veliky explained the crosses: Russian Milk is forced to place bar codes on its packaging, as without this, we will only be able to sell our goods at farms, not in stores. . . . By placing the cross on the bar code, we want to demonstrate our stance: We are with our Lord, Jesus Christ, and not…
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