Religion Dispatches
…en and ascribe them to God, while blaming all the bad stuff on Satan, or demons, or something. This quasi-Manichean, quasi-Gnostic move has made a comeback in recent years, culminating in the New Apostolic movement’s belief that entire cultures are possessed by demons, who are responsible for everything from Rick Perry’s debate gaffes to the sexual revolution. Of course, this theological maneuver is deeply heretical, from a Christian (or Jewish) p…
Read More…ted to Islam twelve years ago and is married to an Indian man. Though Jama Mosque is more inclusive of converts now than before, she doesn’t feel completely welcome in the Indian community. Her husband’s family has trouble accepting her and even tried to delay the couple’s marriage. A common perception exists of converts as less knowledgeable or authentic Muslims than those in the immigrant communities. My father struggled with this when teaching…
Read More
…s staying as a form of lynching. Increasingly, her beliefs became more and more grounded in the Jewish daily prayer, the Shema: “Hear, o Israel, … the Lord is one.” By the time Aronoff reached bar mitzvah age, Dailey decided the time had come to renounce Jesus. “There was a moment she said, ‘OK, we’re doing away with this New Testament nonsense—we’re not doing that no more,’” he remembers. Bethel voted to break from the House of God, though about…
Read More
…a choice, even if it were an unreflective one. He thought people should be more careful, more serious, more specific about their choices. As he described the mission of the Choose Your Own Adventure books, they brought readers face to face with their own choices. “Implicit in the choice is an ethical or moral approach or decision,” Montgomery said. “But that’s never spelled out and it’s never told. Whatever you decide is what you decide.” After he…
Read More
…ent of mainline clergy in the “uncertain middle” who might be willing to demonstrate more leadership on LGBT issues if they that felt their congregants would welcome it. Other research shows that many Mainline Protestant laypeople have been waiting for their clergy leaders to initiate a dialogue. According to Charlie Cardillo, principal and creative director at San Francisco-based Underground Ads (the firm that developed the campaign’s messaging),…
Read More
…it apart is its inclusion of religious studies scholars and philosophers among its leadership. Given the more holistic emphasis of the ECPS, this isn’t necessarily surprising, but it’s something lacking at many of the existing centers devoted to the study of psychedelics. Because many of the existing centers often employ only scientific researchers or clinical professionals, a critical perspective is often lacking among them. Specifically, a lot…
Read More…s Dennis Hastert, also a Republican, and Nancy Pelosi. Over the years, the number of people attending grew, eventually leading to the creation of the CMSA around 2007, when Khan has already left Hill service and was working in the Bush administration. Like other Congressional staffer organizations, the CMSA does not receive any funding or support from the government; rather the status permits it to use space and provides a structure for leadership…
Read More…uston, Seattle, Cleveland, Twin Cities, and Santiago, Chile. More than 140 Mormons are expected to march in Santiago alone. It is striking to think that it was four years ago this month that the LDS Church issued a letter to be read to California congregations urging members to full engagement in support of Proposition 8, setting into motion a headline-grabbing Mormon campaign to end civil same-sex marriage in California. Since then, Mormons for M…
Read More
…any of the flagship evangelical media sources have built their operations around mobilizing this sense of grievance. Answers in Genesis spreads this message effectively through a massive multimedia effort—radio, books, magazines, films, school curricula, conferences, and in-person attractions. But it is far from alone. An entire extended universe of conservative evangelical talk radio, podcasts, television programs, articles, and Internet forums p…
Read More
…” an Illinois mother wrote in 1969. This woman, a mother of nine, lived in Monmouth, Illinois, a small town 200 miles west of Chicago, near the Iowa border. When she “discovered that beyond a doubt that [she] was pregnant,” she “was not prepared to cope with this physically or mentally, having nine children already,” so she decided to seek an abortion. This overtaxed mother relayed how her husband, a prominent chiropractic physician, asked a numbe…
Read More