Religion Dispatches
…hor of an incendiary new book purporting to show that the Bible predicts a military confrontation with Iran. By then, Hagee’s book, Jerusalem Countdown, had sold nearly 500,000 copies. It had occupied the No. 1 position on the Wal-Mart inspirational best-seller list, showed up on Wal-Mart’s list of top 10 best sellers for seven weeks, and made the USA Today top 50 best-seller list for six weeks. * * * * Esther is a favorite Old Testament figure of…
Read More…not to be religiously coerced. Precisely for this reason, chaplains in the military who certainly act in a religious capacity are prohibited from evangelizing those of other faiths, even when their religion otherwise requires them to do so. Where members of different religions dwell together (even when they do so under religious auspices), securing them all the right to the “free exercise” of their faith is much more conducive to social harmony th…
Read More…ance a budget that cuts away, for example, at food stamps while preserving military spending and offering tax cuts to the wealthiest? How do individual acts of mercy balance with international saber-rattling? These are the questions I’ve been waiting for all season long—not the foolish questions fixated on nineteenth-century folk doctrines, or cartoon images taken from low budget anti-Mormon propaganda films—but the questions that get down to the…
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…a much narrower focus on jihad and terrorism. Considering the Gallup poll numbers, which indicate that the more religious a person claims to be, the less tolerant they are of militancy and violence, how do you explain your moving from how Muslims conceive of Shari’ah to a narrower and more securitized frame of Shari’ah, which seems to exclude many Muslim experiences of Shari’ah outside certain crisis areas, like Pakistan and Afghanistan? Structu…
Read More…y on the beach at Coronado—home to the North Island Naval Station—with two military families we count among our closest friends. As we watched our kids play jump rope with kelp strands, a friend recalled something Mitt Romney left out of his keynote address to last week’s Republican National Convention. “No mention of the men and women deployed in Afghanistan,” she said, echoing a concern voiced by conservative commentators like Bill Kristol. “If…
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…ck legal protections for LGBT people in the workplace (73 percent), in the military (63 percent), and in adoptions (60 percent) by significant margins. We are, in other words, an extremely gay-friendly church; and while it has taken a while for this fact to filter out beneath the bluster of our bishops and their lobbyists, political leaders have begun to take note. A Catholic governor and Catholic legislators made marriage equality a reality in Ne…
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…uthorities planned to let the Sikhs assemble in Amritsar and then launch a military attack that would decimate the community. Bhai Mani Singh caught wind of this plan and determined to make a public statement in response to the state’s oppressive practices. He denounced the government’s reneging on its word and announced his refusal to pay the taxes. In response, the state had Bhai Mani Singh arrested, transported to the nearby capital of Lahore,…
Read More…s,” in which he surmised that America’s only hope during the shutdown is a military takeover. In a follow-up to his October 1, 2013 show, Joyner said in Prophetic Bulletin #81 that “American Democracy is failing, and we are headed for Martial law” Moderates of the Republican party must face a hard, crushing fact: the “religious right” fringe of the party that they relied on for votes has become the center of the Party. In fact, the Republican Part…
Read More…edo of ‘the evangelicals are our best friends, don’t ask questions.’” Liberal Jews may have a different reason for opposing Christian Zionist support for Israel: that Christian Zionists not only support continued settlement building and occupation, and favor military confrontation with Iran, but that they also use their political stances to mask an apocalyptic theology. So for liberal Jews and JI, the old saying, “with friends like these who needs…
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…redictably stirred a flurry of comment over the holidays. Most recently, a number of prominent scholars and institutions have come out in opposition (though it should be noted that Hogwarts has thrown its fictitious weight behind the resolution). At the risk of piling on, there are significant reasons well beyond “academic freedom” (claimed by both sides in this debate) to oppose this action. To lay my cards on the table—I have attended the ASA n…
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