Religion Dispatches
…vious examples include contemporary statements pairing assertions that the United States is a Christian nation with political opposition to universal health coverage, social justice, entitlement spending, and a whole array of benefits to all US citizenry.The subtext of these assertions is that such social benefits burden “real [read white] Americans” with taking care of those “other [read colored] people” living within the US borders. US airwaves…
Read More…hat Hispanics are the most discriminated against group in the contemporary United States. A recent CNN poll confirms Pew’s findings, yet unsurprisingly 71% of Hispanics oppose Arizona’s law. You don’t need a Ph.D. to realize that those individuals who will not be terrorized by this law seem to have no problem with it. Faith-based groups were active last week in publicly protesting Arizona’s law. Religious leaders evoke compassion, the dignity of t…
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…nd more broadly, what do you make of popular notions about Santería in the United States? And what’s your take on recent court decisions that recognize and protect the religiosity of the practice? Generally speaking, when we are talking about racial and ethnic minorities, the United States’ racial (and racist) system tends to find much of what is non-white “suspicious.” That’s why Santería continues to be categorized as a cult by some, and why the…
Read More…rior to “the removal of God” from our schools: 1700s • The earliest known United States shooting to happen on school property was the Pontiac’s Rebellion school massacre on July 26, 1764, where four Lenape American Indians entered the schoolhouse near present-day Greencastle, Pennsylvania, shot and killed schoolmaster Enoch Brown, and killed nine or ten children (reports vary). Only two children survived. 1800s • November 2, 1853, Louisville, Ken…
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…enominational churches (themselves amounting to many millions more) in the United States and abroad. What’s more, NAR teachings about demons, and the urgent call for Christians to conquer culture are increasingly held by the larger evangelical world—even among non-Charismatic and non-Pentecostal communities. The NAR’s unique sense of paranoia about secular culture has mutated and spread to the broader Christian Right, a movement that was already p…
Read More…licy statement that will be changed. He lamented that more children in the United States are raised in families led by unmarried mothers. “Even as we must live with the marriage laws and other traditions of a declining world, those who strive for exaltation must make personal choices in family life according to the Lord’s way whenever that differs from the world’s way,” Oaks said. Azerbaijan: Human Rights Activists Sound Alarm About ‘Vicious Crack…
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…a yoga—were also disliked by many mainstream populations from India to the United States, those who were interested in and engaged in physical techniques faced the harshest criticisms. Finally, Craddock’s construction of yoga is consistent with the history of modern yoga’s adaptation, assimilation, and syncretism. Craddock identified as a Unitarian but also as the pastor of the Church of Yoga. The fact that a woman could be so polymorphously relig…
Read More…rights serve as its contemporary calling card, the religious right in the United States, as some have argued, has its origins in racial segregation, particularly the establishment of private Christian schools as a work-around to the desegregation policies that emerged out of Brown v Board of Education. Given this history, it’s not surprising that those on the religious right would continue to support a president that is, by most sane accounts, a…
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…crimination, to say nothing of the hegemonic nature of Christianity in the United States,, Camosy is gaslighting his readers. In contrast, there is no Jewish tradition in the United States of using the concept of tikkun olam as a bludgeon to control non-Jews. While Democrats must undoubtedly be careful in how they question Barrett, assuming Trump does nominate her to fill Ginsburg’s seat, public discussion that questions the relationship between B…
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…support for Israel. In the period from 1948 to the mid ’70s, when both the United States and Israel were led by governments with secular democratic agendas, the ‘Cyrus idea’ was present, if somewhat muted. The confluence of the George W. Bush presidency and a rightward shift in the Israeli government meant that visions of the Third Temple were no longer thought of as metaphorical. And although supporters of the ‘Temple Mount Faithful’ still consti…
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