Religion Dispatches
…shington scene. It helped to broker the not-necessarily-intuitive alliance between free-market economics and conservative religion that rolled back the New Deal and built a Republican majority. A handful of Congressmen from both parties live in a townhouse that The Family owns. Born-again Watergate crook Chuck Colson is tried-and-true Family. Hillary Clinton has called Doug Coe, who has led the organization since 1966, “a genuinely loving spiritua…
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…tutional responsibility. Second, shallow forgiveness blurs the distinction between forgiveness and healing. Hunt and Freeze clearly have learning to do. Given that Hunt’s transgression was found out in 2010, his denials and minimizations this year indicate that he hasn’t grasped how his behavior puts women and churches at risk. Freeze lost a lucrative job in 2017, but as recently as this summer he used his position to tell a victim of sexual viole…
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…“I have my own misgivings about how LGBT people are treated in the Middle East, and at the same time, I am one. But…when the Muslim ban happened, it really destroyed a lot of my faith in this country, and it really hurt my family.” (Jeff Goldblum, open-mouthed, nodded along as Cox spoke.) “I’m here, and I deserve to be in America as much as anyone else.” In a challenge meant to celebrate American inclusivity, Cox had to share her personal trauma…
Read More…house, while not living alone. I find it difficult. So when I came to the east coast, I got to enjoy fasting, suhur, prayer and iftar with the people I love the most on the planet: my own family. I remember posting on Twitter just how awesome it was to have that combination: my own eat, pray, love in the month of fasting, right here in America. I confess, I was so busy enjoying family that I let my tarawih and Qur’an reading slip… Now, I am here…
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…at regard, Ted Strickland, a certified Methodist preacher, was on somewhat better ground actually quoting Matthew 6 and denouncing Romney as someone whose riches have hardened his heart and distanced him from any identification with the Reign of God, in which those who are now first will be last, and vice versa. To me at least, the cringe factor over creeping religiosity was mitigated by the broader populist appeal, the volcanic “us vs. them” core…
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…g laws and rehabilitation. Atonement, where Jesus comes in to fill the gap between us and God, is this notion that Jesus has to pay a price, a “penal substitution,” on our behalf because we can’t pay the price that’s so huge for offending God. This is the legalistic model —it’s very medieval, where you have a Lord and you don’t want to upset the Lord. What you’re proposing to replace this is something that actually reaches further back in Christia…
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…courge of terrorism,” he says to the crowd of one hundred gathered at Park East Synagogue. “We pray to God for an end to this tyranny, for a time when hatred is not taught to children. These boys were cut down as they studied law, studied the Torah.” New York Councilman David Greenfield is invited to the bimah where he says, “The war for Israel’s survival is happening on Twitter and Facebook, in the papers and on the evening news.” People in the c…
Read More…m that even if he didn’t directly play a role in supporting the law or its promoters, he had a clear role to play in denouncing it, and much more quickly than he did. There’s no doubt he has a strong relationship with government, business, and religious leaders in Uganda, according to his own statements. So it would seem logical for people at least to think he would have some sway to denounce the proposed law as a brutal violation of human rights…
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…plugged in, multicultural urban worlds of academia, especially on the far east and far west sections of the country, see the bright future of globalization. In other regions and in other communities, they see its desolation. They are the forgotten ones in the globalized world. Recently I attended a family funeral in the area of the country where I was raised, in central Missouri and southern Illinois. One of my cousins, whom I had not seen in yea…
Read More…ecause they are culturally superior aspiring Europeans while states to the east have no such capacity. The reality in Egypt belies such simple analysis. For years we have endured the notion that ‘the Arab street’ alternates between indolent catatonia and frothing rage in the face of cartoons. Egyptians, who have been called too illiterate, poor, spiritless and lulled by “stability” to revolt, have staged impassioned protests for nothing less than…
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