Religion Dispatches
…t may bother an adult, but instead creates parent-child relationships that mimic Dobson’s conception of the relationship between people and God. That is, spanking produces adults who are “God-fearing.” The threat and use of pain by a parent on their child brings fear into the home and gives it a central place in the formation of the child’s personality. When that fear vanishes from the home, according to Dobson, it is a parenting failure that resu…
Read More
…evangelical writer and preacher John Piper (who made news recently by claiming that a Minneapolis tornado was God’s way of warning the Lutheran Church [ELCA] not to vote in favor of ordaining partnered gays and lesbians). The audience, also comprised of conservative evangelicals, ensured that the interview was predictably soft-serve, and his message is illuminating. First of all, he told Piper that he engages in apologetic debating for the sake o…
Read More
…vangelical nonprofit in Colorado Springs: “Even though we picture Latino families as family units, they are a very unhealthy structure [compared] to the way they do family.” The family at the center of evangelical values is patriarchal, heterosexual, well-off, and white. It is neither intergenerational nor dependent on social welfare or charity. The reality that fewer families every year can attain this ideal doesn’t diminish its power. Indeed, as…
Read More
…nia leadership.” We think that knowing is better than not knowing why so many prominent religious and political leaders view the rest of us not merely as fellow citizens with whom they may disagree, but as the enemy in a great eschatological showdown. That’s why we want to take a little deeper dive into the The Latter Rain movement, which may be one of the most significant movements you’ve never heard of. It had a bright (if largely obscure) momen…
Read More
…ng to speak to a similar crowd as the one that listens to my podcast: open-minded millennials and Gen-Xers who can’t help but question the status quo, many of whom are post-evangelical or post-Christian altogether. I want them to know that a bit of free thinking and iconoclasm never hurt anyone, and that God can handle our occasional wrestling against him. He’s not nearly as petty as many of his spokespeople portray him! Are you hoping to just inf…
Read More
…ght be “out on bail” until further notice, expected to return to court at any time for a new trial, pending new evidence. The cloud of accusation, and the threat of incarceration, might be allowed to hang over them indefinitely. But hung juries aside, there are reasons why we don’t do that. In the face of uncertainty, we think it is better to err on the side of letting the guilty go free than on the side of shattering the lives of the innocent. An…
Read More…down, having failed to advance a positive image of the country.) That the New York Times is reporting on the story indicates how much negative press has been generated; some of the postings are stunningly offensive—and the embassy might be better off looking more seriously into them. Certainly, they do not help the current Israeli government’s declining popularity in the eastern half of the West. More worryingly, the deliberate provocations seem…
Read More…failed to speak out against gay marriage, as Laurie Goodstein notes in the New York Times. But in this world of ballooning sex/gender complexity, these positions are the least of the problems confronting the Vatican. I began thinking about all this at the first meeting of a feminist theory class I took in a Ph.D. program at Temple University 20 years ago. Students went around the table introducing themselves. Halfway through, a young woman said, …
Read More
…he has screened the film at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and in New York.* At Fuller, he says, people were sharply critical of IHOP’s training and missionary style. The people at IHOP, he said, are planning to release a statement in response to the film. While he knows the people running IHOP are not going to change their view of the Bible, Williams hopes they may be able to agree on a human rights perspective, and rethink how they go i…
Read More…Supreme Court ruled in Town of Greece v. Galloway that the town of Greece, New York, could use explicitly Christian prayers to open its council meetings. For many the ruling represented an erosion of the establishment clause. Greaves rejoiced at another opportunity for public displays of Satanism and even composed a Satanic prayer for future council meetings. Also in May, The Satanic Temple drew national media attention after they announced plans…
Read More