Religion Dispatches
…appear seemingly at random and have no cure. My habit of thinking, reading and writing about that mystery? That might also be called faith. By the way, I was wrong about the chemo and the ivy and kissing the cold feet of Jesus. Really, really wrong….
Read More…e want to seek to communicate. When we feel passionately that something is wrong, we are still called to love that person who is ignoring what God’s Word says. It’s not always easy to do.” Those, of course, sound like fighting words to the ears of more liberal people of faith who see their acceptance of LGBT people as the fulfillment and embodiment of Jesus’ call to embrace the outcast. Wright, who pastors Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta,…
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…at hand, but also explains why the more aggressive or dismissive ones are wrong. If user reviews are any indication, Atheos has been instructive to several non-believers who sought structure and resources for their conversations. Atheist blogger Courtney Heard wrote a glowing review on her site, Godless Mom, where she described what a great learning experience the app was. “It’s not just taking me through common conversations that I get frustrate…
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…coming one. It has also become increasingly doctrinaire. If something went wrong while Hubbard was alive, he would just say, “You know, this didn’t work, let’s try something else.” But now that he’s gone, you really can’t fuck with anything he said. Their notions about marriage, sex, family, and children—lumped together and called the Second Dynamic—have changed. Now, if you want to have a baby in the Sea Org, you’re reportedly told to get an abor…
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…ll written) dross is its own small tragedy. Because for all that Bloom got wrong about theory and the state of the discipline (and he was very often wrong about it), he was correct in his contention that the sometimes godlessness of the field was a critical detriment, and that “A nation obsessed with religion rather desperately needs a religious criticism,” as he noted in The American Religion. The works listed above, and more besides, constitute…
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…he evidence of their therapeutic potential convincing, though I think it’s wrong to portray their benefits as miraculous, as the media often does. What I’m suggesting instead is a broader discussion and a shift in frameworks. As Vice’s Shayla Love has rightly pointed out, how we understand psychedelic experiences, even in clinical contexts, is indelibly shaped by “the psychedelic movement’s forefathers, like Aldous Huxley.” I’d suggest it goes bac…
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…tes have become reproductive healthcare deserts. The new restrictions in a number of states have produced predictable horror stories: pre-teen rape survivors forced to travel for abortion healthcare; mothers with wanted pregnancies gone wrong forced to carry unviable fetuses to term; patients with dangerous pregnancies pushed to death’s door because physicians are forced to defer to hospital lawyers rather than their own medical judgment. These cr…
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…ishops who’ll say, “I will listen to the pope but you know, sometimes he’s wrong, and I’m not going to follow if I feel like it’s wrong.” And of course Catholics are always talking about the primacy of conscience as their response— you went to Jesuit school and know the drill. But on that note, there is a sense right now that religion is divisive rather than inclusive. And that’s very much an American problem right now. So how can we as religion w…
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…n their lives (whoever they may be). Because of this, they fear making the wrong choice. They fear the humiliation and pain they believe comes with being wrong. Legally enforceable mandates make the choice easy by making the choice for them. Authoritarians are weak. Vaccine mandates help them save face. Second, they don’t want freedom. Yes, I know. They say they want freedom. They say they will die for it. They won’t, though. They won’t do anythin…
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…ue. We won’t run out of work if all we ever do is expose those theological problems, and offer more honest and responsible theological possibilities. But then there’s the question whether fundamentalist theology made an abuser where there was none before, whether it turned someone into a predator who would have been perfectly well-adjusted had they just been an Easter-and-Christmas Presbyterian and member of the Rotary club. And although I’ve seen…
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