Religion Dispatches
…tion to Allah. I also like the way he refers to our Prophet Muhammad. I think, the problem we used to have with being referred to as Mohammedans was only to clarify that we do not worship the Prophet. Because, in a way, what links us to other Muslims today is not just tawhid as much as it is that we follow the way of Muhammad. We are the ummah of Muhammad. According to the Qur’an, he will be a witness for us. And this makes me think, who is this P…
Read More…rather than constitutional violations. The group said in a statement that today’s decision “protects the freedom of community volunteers to pray according to their faith in a public setting, without censorship” and “defends the prayer giver’s freedom of speech over an ‘offended’ person’s demands for censorship.” Senior Counsel David Cortman of Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the town, also described the result in a statement as a vi…
Read More…tion to Allah. I also like the way he refers to our Prophet Muhammad. I think, the problem we used to have with being referred to as Mohammedans was only to clarify that we do not worship the Prophet. Because, in a way, what links us to other Muslims today is not just tawhid as much as it is that we follow the way of Muhammad. We are the ummah of Muhammad. According to the Qur’an, he will be a witness for us. And this makes me think, who is this P…
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…hostile mainstream and by necessity engendered by their western isolation. Today, that drive is motivated—as I’ve heard discussed among leading figures in Mormon Studies this week and as was hinted at in the Church’s own statement and a Deseret News editorial today—by the need to create an endowment capable of sustaining the global physical infrastructure of Mormonism (temples, churches, universities) even as the bulk of the Church’s population sh…
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…theology that animates evangelical Christians today. Extreme moral dualism Today’s white evangelicals in the U.S.—along with many conservative white Catholics and mainline Protestants—imagine themselves to be the persecuted faithful, victims of state oppression in the mold of biblical apocalypses. While this might seem ludicrous to outsiders, it aptly captures their sense of the disorder of the last half century as they’ve been compelled to share…
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…ed for our Parliament to legislate complex provisions protecting religious freedom and expanding the freedom to marry.” …“Given the increasing number of children being brought up by same sex couples, it is desirable that the state take away any social stigma against same sex parents. “Given the ageing population, the state has an interest in recognising and protecting long term relationships of same sex couples who care for each other. “Given the…
Read More…overnment-funded job opportunities on the basis of religion.” Lynn told me today, “this whole thing driven by the Conference of Catholic Bishops and World Vision, which have sucked up a vast amount of federal dollars and want to keep every one of them. The real problem is the audacity of these groups to suggest that if somehow they didn’t get the money because of their discriminatory hiring practices, the poor would be left hopeless. There are doz…
Read More…” playbook, and in particular, that of Perry’s fellow Texan and Christians United for Israel founder John Hagee. At Perry’s prayer rally, The Response, in Houston last month, Hagee spoke and brought a sizable contingent of congregants from his San Antonio church. Perry has prayed at Hagee’s church, and agreed with him that non-Christians are doomed to hell. The appeasement accusation is as old as Neville Chamberlain, and deployed with frequency by…
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…eadline called him an “Apostle of Bible-Based Economics,” and Christianity Today declared that North “Saw Austrian Economics in the Bible and Disaster on the Horizon.” All true. But both obits made little assessment of the political and theological significance of his life and prodigious work as an author, editor, publisher and back room political strategist. Let’s see if we can help. The 1976 election featuring professing evangelical Christian Ji…
Read More…—something the study unequivocally does NOT provide. In fact, Christianity Today gave him a perfect opening to tell people to stop misrepresenting his findings, and he ducked it: What would you say to religious and political groups that promote traditional marriage and want to use the NFSS results to “prove” that parenting by same-sex couples is damaging to children? I am neither a theologian nor politically oriented, so I wouldn’t presume to tell…
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