Religion Dispatches
…Heaven. In Dentistry there is only Hell.” 7.) BOOKLIST’S TOP TEN RELIGION BOOKS FOR YOUTH Booklist, a magazine published by the American Library Association, has posted their top picks in a category that includes a book by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, God’s Dream—and one that sounds particularly good to our inner teenager, by RD contributor Donna Freitas, called The Possibilities of Sainthood. (“Antonia wants to be kissed,” the description goes, “but…
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…Rick Warren signed a statement of concern about global warming, joining a number of the new breed of evangelicals, much to the chagrin of the old guard like James Dobson. The press began to talk about the expanded agenda of the “new evangelicals,” an agenda not limited to the old shibboleths of abortion and opposition to gay marriage. The Five Non-Negotiable Issues Despite all the above, on a number of issues critical to women’s lives, he remains…
Read More…ageddon: We are in a battle for our very survival…—published by the Strang Book Group—will hit bookstores the second week of November. From the publishers: In Financial Armageddon… Hagee addresses the subject of global oil and economic crisis head on, demonstrating clearly that God has much to say about both the current oil and economic crises and our personal finances in general. Christians like every other American should know how these issues a…
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…enormous collections of bad debt, or worse still, imaginary insurance policies, simply because the person selling them has called them “securities.” This crisis is ironically not psychological at all, though much of the pain is. No, this crisis in empirical, a simple matter of numbers (and words) not adding up. And the reason they don’t? Because people, really bad people, lied about them, cooked the books, sold this nonsense to their friends, and…
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…uing a host of Obama missteps including complaints about the reversal of a number of Bush administration executive orders. Conservative evangelical leaders will engage in a spirited and steadfast attempt to rebuild and reinvigorate a wounded movement, leading to the US Postal Service and direct-mail companies experiencing a surge in business as urgent fundraising appeals pepper the mailboxes and inboxes of religious right supporters. At its worst—…
Read More…venue in 2007. Americans United points out on its website that there are a number of other important religious right organizations to be aware of, including Gary Bauer’s American Values, Rick Scarborough’s Vision America, and Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition. An expanded version of the Church & State story is available here. ++++++++++ New Coalition takes on Christian Zionism Before the end of the year, the Los Angeles Times reported in…
Read More…efining marriage as only between a man and a woman from the party’s policy book. CBC’s Janyce McGregor reported that, during debate on an initial vote on Friday, May 27, an MP from Saskatchewan warned that “social conservatives would abandon the party” and that without them, “Liberals and the NDP get ‘a walk to power.’” Marriage was among a number of controversial issues voted on, including provisions on marijuana and assisted dying: In a release…
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…ope and many others, it all comes down to a literal reading of the Bible’s book of Genesis which says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” They say that means God created man and woman, separate and distinct. Mark Yarhouse is director of the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity at Regent University, a conservative Christian university that was founded by the 700 Club’s P…
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…know all of this? Educated guesswork. I could be wrong. But here’s how the numbers break down: globally, 323 families in the study identified as non-religious. And 219 kids in the study came from China. It is extremely unlikely that more than a handful of the Chinese families identified themselves as Christian or Muslim, and we know for sure that they mostly avoided identifying as Buddhist, because just 18 families in the whole 1,170 kid dataset d…
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…like Phillips’s. But, as survey after survey has demonstrated, substantial numbers of Catholics, and to a lesser extent evangelicals as well, are not following their denominations’ leaders down this particular road, and there is a growing number of religious institutions that have embraced marriage equality and advocated for LGBTQ+ rights in the public square. Cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop make it clear that the boundaries of a national settleme…
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