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Weird Testament: The Bible Gets the R. Crumb Treatment

By Gabriel Mckee

…ater renamed the Worldwide Church of God, and now known as Grace Communion International). This Adventist offshoot was fervently pre-millennialist, and Armstrong saw in Wolverton’s grotesque style the perfect means of capturing and communicating the horrors of the tribulation. And horrific the illustrations are—with their crashing planes, erupting volcanoes, boil-stricken sufferers, and monstrous whirlwinds—Wolverton’s literalist depictions of Rev…

Tariq Ramadan in Montreal: Defining Ethics in Terms of Religion

By Spencer Dew

…aker at the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting, is a subject of international fame and infamy; yet this infamy seems less tied to the revolutionary political agenda advanced in his work than to that central and most controversial fact—that Ramadan is a Muslim. Indeed, for Ramadan, all of his thought and work emerges from his acceptance of the claim that the one and only God, Allah, creator of the universe, twice offered Revelations of H…

Defending the Helpless: New Bible Highlights Poverty and Justice

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…nd injustice,” said Richard Stearns, president and CEO of World Vision, an international relief organization and collaborator on the Bible project. I’m not sure that it’s because the Bible is “outdated” that so many people can’t pick out scripture verses dealing with issues of poverty and justice. The poll really proves that the religious right has so thoroughly hijacked the real message of the Bible that when people quote passages about helping t…

No Buddhists in Washington?

By Danny Fisher

…Dialogue at Cambridge, founded by Daisaku Ikeda, president of Soka Gakkai International. Consider the Bay Area-based Buddhist Peace Fellowship, which mobilizes dozens of chapters and thousands of members around important social and political issues. Consider publications like Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and Shambhala Sun (for whom I blog) that have found appeal beyond just their target demographic. Consider the work of Buddhists in professional…

Telling the World a ‘Big Story’: RD in Conversation with Karen Armstrong

By Laurie Patton

…an, and lesser known but equally effective workers like Tho Ha Vinh of the International Red Cross, the Charter certainly has the right endorsements. But can the Charter do what Armstrong hopes? Noted scholar of religion Laurie L. Patton sat down with Armstrong to discuss the Charter’s possibilities, and Armstrong’s work more generally, for Religion Dispatches. In the Charter for Compassion, you’ve started a movement via the internet in which we r…

Oral Roberts, Pioneering Christian Zionist

By Shalom Goldman

…t: The destiny of the State of Israel is without question the most crucial international matter facing the world today. I believe that the people of Israel have not only a theological but also a historical and legal right to the land. I am personally a Zionist, having gained that perspective from my belief in Old Testament scriptures. In Falwell’s office at his own Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia the wall behind his desk was adorned with…

That Mercenary Feeling: What the Apparently Unlimited Use of “Contractors” Says About American Empire in Afghanistan and Iraq

By Peter Laarman

…ticularly like. He quotes Frederick Barton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who tracks our country’s growing reliance on civilian mercenaries. Barton observes that “no one really knows whether having a force made up mainly of contractors whose salaries were often triple or quadruple those of a corresponding soldier or Marine was cheaper or more expensive for the American taxpayer.” Excuse me? “No one really knows”?? I’m not a…

The Myth of ‘Voodoo’: A Caribbean American Response to Representations of Haiti

By Dianne M. Stewart

At a time when increasing numbers of informed audiences in both scholarly and popular circles have begun to recognize African religious cultures and the rich contributions they have made to African diaspora civilizations, Pat Robertson has made another dubious contribution to America’s fascination with the ‘problem of Haiti.’ As Robertson narrates it, in his latest fiction-disguised-as-revelation, “something happened a long time ago in Haiti,” an…

No Garden to Get Back to: Understanding Post-Avatar Ecological Depressive Disorder

By Ryann Croken

…ks one’s heart. This past Monday, Avatar surpassed Titanic’s longstanding international box office record, making Avatar the highest-grossing film of all time. For a movie with such a progressive environmental (not to mention anti-imperial and anti-corporate) message to achieve this kind of universal popularity is remarkable. Any explanation as to how a mainstream Hollywood mega-blockbuster could radicalize the eco-consciousnesses of scores of pe…

The Tebow Effect

By Sarah Posner

…of State who just last month, in commemorating the 15th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, declared: More than 215 million women worldwide lack access to the modern forms of contraception, and this contributes to the nearly 20 million unsafe abortions that take place very year. Sexually transmitted diseases, of course including, but not limited to, HIV and AIDS, claim millions of lives annually amon…