Religion Dispatches
…erconnected. But the very structure of education in America—not only in America, but America is where I live—people don’t know enough about enough to be able to put the pieces together. It is a culture of expertise, which is more and more about less and less. After God goes back and puts together all those pieces. There is a very, very different way of looking at the world in that book. The hope is that a few people understand that. What I do is t…
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…s have become common after the Russian government adopted the 1997 law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations.” Promoted by the Orthodox Church and directed specifically against new religious movements, the law distinguished between the four traditional faiths—Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism—and non-traditional groups such as Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Latter-Day Saints, and Hare Krishnas. In order to maintain…
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…y no other artist has garnered a significant write-up in both Christianity Today and The New Yorker. He called himself the “Painter of Light” and then trademarked the phrase. He includes a Christian fish (ichthus) above his signature—but he’s also alleged to have urinated on a Winnie the Pooh figure at Disneyland, among other socially unacceptable activities. The paradox of Kinkade and his impact on culture is encapsulated in a posthumous statem…
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…in light of the preference of the choosing subject is a basic condition of freedom. King saw freedom as a moral right. Thus, King was on the side of freedom. However, freedom can be complex. King would have likely challenged the idea of subjectivity as it relates to the freedom of choice of all subjects involved, forcing us to sit with the possible tensions of our choices and one’s moral right to choose. In the end I think King would have upheld w…
Read More…oncentrations, but only in small areas. Perhaps the opposite is true in America today. 3. I think the most important point in this discussion is that we have to hold teachers to a different bar than normal practitioners. For normal practitioners, if they do as little as one breath per day, and if they just benefit in some small way, I’m happy for them. But teachers need to have deep practices and deep understanding of Dharma. That’s the only way t…
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…version to trade unionism? The key swing constituencies are Hispanic and African-American evangelicals, who are far more likely to embrace unionism than their white brethren. Faith communities serving immigrant workers and their families completely understand that unions do more than anyone else to offer protection and a better way of life to new Americans. But even if theologically moderate Protestants begin to swing more toward a pro-union stanc…
Read More…nt guarantees equal protection to fertilized eggs. At his press conference today, Santorum alluded to reproduction and procreation by praising the family as “the moral enterprise that is America,” and by specifically thanking the 19 Kids and Counting Duggars for campaigning for him. It might have sounded like a standard political homage to wholesome family life, but to anyone who knows Santorum’s views, it was an homage to uber-fertility. As Kathr…
Read More…explored in a piece for the Daily Beast in June), particularly his role in promoting homeschooling, Lizza gives short shrift to Rushdoony, who is not only a “prominent Dominionist,” as Lizza describes him, but the founder of Christian Reconstructionism and Titus’ inspiration. And, as Julie Ingersoll has detailed on numerous occasions, “Christian Reconstructionist founder Rousas John Rushudoony is often called the father of the Christian homeschool…
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…hey put on plain display the unholy amalgamation of white supremacy and American Christianity that lives among us today. These unsettling connections among white supremacy, white Christianity and support for the former president are not confined to the extremists who attacked the Capitol. There is a strong correlation between voting for Trump in the 2020 election and median scores on the Racism Index—a composite measure of attitudes about systemic…
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…bullies within the fringe of his own party?” she said. “What we have seen today is the Turnbull government have overturned the decisions that their own government took just a matter of months ago.” The Greens’ sexuality spokesman, Senator Robert Simms, said it was “clear that Malcolm Turnbull has thrown LGBTI young people under the bus today by bowing to the rightwing backbench bullies and stripping back the Safe Schools program”. Meanwhile, the…
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