Religion Dispatches
…umbers given out by the Census Bureau earlier this month: big jumps in the number of Americans losing compensated work for working poverty or worse, and concomitant big jumps in the number of people losing health care coverage. The thing is—and labor market specialists all concur—these blows are no longer cyclical phenomena that will be reversed once “the economy” really starts humming. “The economy,” in the way that mainstream economists gauge it…
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…nt. We strive to tell the story from Islam to Judaism to Christianity to a number of other smaller movements. What does the center’s existence say about the continued relevance of black religion, Christianity especially, in a cultural milieu that’s becoming more secular and averse to institutions? It reminds us of what Pew and other studies have showed us, which is that within the African American context, there isn’t the downward shift that we’ve…
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…for outer-ring or suburban locales. Both of these dynamics contributed to vastly diminished property values, tax revenues, and local urban economies—resulting in fewer resources for public schools, public services, and urban infrastructure. This exodus of resources from American cities and neighborhoods occurred against the backdrop of an ideological climate emphasizing public sphere fiscal austerity and balanced budgets, which compounded social…
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…ike Tony Perkins. Mr. Perkins, you don’t speak for me or a number of conservative evangelicals who are worn out and sickened by the same old battle cry you believe we should join. Many ask today, why should we join one side and fight against the other? Each time it’s the same banal response: For no other reason than that we should just fall in line against what extreme public figures deem a societal evil worthy to be fought against. That answer is…
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…, was in no way the birthday of anything. It was the start of a long and savage struggle against the world’s most powerful empire at the time. If the United States can be said to have an actual birthday, that date should be June 21, 1788, when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution—the number specified in order for the Constitution to be in full and binding effect for all 13 former colonies. Those who prefer a winter birth…
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…ially under Obamacare who are the most dissatisfied with the law. As conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt said on MSNBC Tuesday evening around the time I began gulping bourbon like it was La Croix: I think Obamacare is the untold story here. I think it just clobbered people in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But the psychological impact of the ACC went way beyond just those folks who get their insurance through it. Within 30 minutes of an article bein…
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…n is otherwise thought,” with Catholics more closely “aligned with liberal values than Evangelicals.” But these numbers shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has bothered to looked at Catholic opinion polling for the past 30 years. The fact is, on most hot-button, sex-related issues, Catholic opinion has long been about the same as public opinion, and mainstream Protestant opinion, as a whole and significantly more liberal than Evangelical op…
Read More…c leaders who are willing to say the word trauma and talk about the all-pervasive violence in this culture, not to mention the extent of mental disturbance and the fact that American civilians have more assault rifles in their possession than does the U.S. military. All well and good. But we have too few leaders who will talk about the deeper roots of these things or attempt to explain why American culture is “exceptional”—exceptional in its toxic…
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…l organizations and individuals. The Green Number, or Numéro Vert, is a private telephone hotline in France where family and friends can report someone they fear may become radicalized. And in the U.K., Prevent is a program that essentially creates ‘trigger warnings’ for teachers and institutions to report the potential for radicalization. I do not mean to condemn or even criticize these programs, merely to point out they represent a step towards…
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…ocalypse. Key takeaway: not big cities. To observe that the apocalypse, in varying forms, is all around us is no more than a platitude. Pick your apocalypse: zombie apocalypse, any number of post-apocalyptic worlds that crowd our television screens, movie theaters, and book stores, or, perhaps more traditionally, the apocalypse associated with the Second Coming. Think of the 2011 Family Radio Billboards: “He is Coming Again! May 21, 2011.” Or the…
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