Religion Dispatches
…Niebuhrian humility. Conservatives may see humility as “apologizing for America,” or as lack of conviction in American exceptionalism, but humility is what, ultimately, saves us. Rosenberg responded at some length, opposing Niebuhrian theological humility to a scientific decision-making process that sorts out good options and bad even before decision makers use appropriate caution in choosing the path forward. The institutionalization of checks an…
Read More…From Catholic Perspectives” scheduled for September 25 which reportedly caused Chaput to cancel the group’s permission to use the space. “Unfortunately, this is yet another instance of the kind of exclusion LGBT Catholics and supporters have endured for decades. Bishops have refused to allow us to meet in our own Churches, retreat centers and colleges,” Equally Blessed said in a statement. “There is a lack of information in the Catholic Church ab…
Read More…arbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, urged Christians not to use the KJV because, Bauer said, “it was commissioned by a homosexual.” (Note that the anti-KJV campaign never really took off; it remains the most popular translation for evangelicals, according to a recent survey by the Southern Baptist Convention-affiliated LifeWay.) Perhaps, though, the Democratic Party would have some issues with one of its House members taking up the…
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…tends to be more ethnographic and qualitative. It’s a vicious circle, because women are socialized to ask certain kinds of questions, to be better listeners, and to be not as assertive or not as aggressive, so that also influences people’s choice of what to study and how to study it. Graduate school can also suck the genuine curiosity out of you—and this happens for men and women, though we respond to it differently. You are taught that you can’t…
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…ies between Jewish and Black nationalisms, and began to learn Jewish and African American histories at Stanford University with Clayborne Carson, George Fredrickson, Sylvia Wynter, Mark Mancall, Arnie Eisen, and Tudor Parfitt. A chance encounter led me to visit the Original Hebrew Israelites of Dimona, Israel, and the experience was so powerful that I set out to study the antecedents of Black Israelite movements. At that time, Shlomo Levy, a Colum…
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…ow, more than 30 years later, the Lakota, some of the poorest people in America, refuse to take the money. They want the land, not the $1.3 billion that the original settlement is now said to be worth. Slice of Heaven! In 1981, Indian activists established the Yellow Thunder camp in the Black Hills, named for Raymond Yellow Thunder, an Oglala Lakota murdered in Gordon, Nebraska (a Pine Ridge border town) in 1972 after he was stripped naked, throw…
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…qually doomed, offer an inkling of hope that there is enough common ground between the apex of American power and the popular expressions of its terrorist enemies that the two might someday graze together, like Isaiah’s wolves and lambs. It is, backhandedly, the sign that a more patient dialogue, over years of inevitable sacrifice and setback on all sides, might finally be fruitful, uncovering a world everyone can stand to live in. But a first ste…
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…heologians like Origen who say “No, incense is bad, that’s what the pagans use.” But obviously they had to say it because people were using incense. I mean, you don’t issue a prohibition of something that no one’s doing. And then after the fact you have to make the rules. You could probably find that alternate church history you were looking for that way: “Things that have been banned” gives you information about those practices. Right, and then h…
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…as in mind a strict set of people who are part of the blood and soil of America. The nation doesn’t exist to protect the rights and freedoms of its people, but to cultivate the traditions and faith of one people. What does Wolfe’s view of the Christian nation look like on the ground? On Twitter, he has argued that women should willingly give up the vote in order to ensure the nation is run by men as God intended. In a nation run by a hierarchy of…
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…past. Marsden and Noll argue that growing evangelical movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America prove that the faith has not totally lost its way, while Bebbington explores the recent history of British evangelicalism in order to highlight the peculiar nature of the American scene. Evangelicalism is now a global phenomenon, the editors conclude, and the troubling features of any particular part of the movement should not distract us from the in…
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