Religion Dispatches
…his piece is about. You see, I’m done believing. I’m done believing that writing words about this shit is going to make it better. I’m done believing that religion will help Black people get justice in America. It isn’t. Black men and women are still dead, Police are still jacking us up and shooting black people for minor infractions, and white Americans are still yelling, “We want to take our country back.” I’m tired of giving you the fiery words…
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…he root of all evil. Riffing on Neuhaus (and borrowing from Pope John Paul II), First Things intellectuals will often say that politics is downstream from culture and that culture is downstream from religion. What they usually don’t go on to tell you—at least not openly—is that religion is downstream from politics. In other words, the mission of the Catholic Church is inherently political, and anything but passive. An influential piece published i…
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…akker. For the first time in years, he explained, “I can honestly say the vision I had fifty years ago is now. God said he’s going to restore what the cankerworm has eaten.” The evidence? Bakker is building again. His new complex in rural Missouri, called Morningside, includes RV parking, cottages for rent, cottages for sale, a home for unwed pregnant women, and, at its heart, Grace Street, a near-perfect replica of the kitschy Main Street USA tha…
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…he end of her toothbrush to scratch observations on the walls. Through participant observation at a prison, Hoodfar wrote fieldnotes about the interrogations she endured and conversations with other prisoners. When the interrogators screamed at her, she analyzed their word choice. When they hurled threats at her, she considered the power dynamics at play. In all this, being an anthropologist allowed her to tell stories to herself, to reassure hers…
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…e everyone knows about Spears, few know—and even fewer discuss—the role religion has played in her life. Like Katy Perry, who was once a Contemporary Christian Music artist, Spears has deep roots in white American evangelicalism. Born and raised in the Bible Belt and surrounded by conservative evangelical Protestants, Spears grew up Southern Baptist and spent her childhood performing in Baptist choirs. For her very first stage performance, when sh…
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In a recent article on the ABC News website about the un-scientific practice known as “ex-gay therapy,” the outlet neglected to include any comment from anyone in the well-publicized network of reparative therapy survivors. Instead, ABC provided a largely uncritical platform to a member of a certified anti-LGBT hate group. Veteran journalists Brian Ross and Brian Epstein report on the celebratory mood among advocates of “gay conversion therapy,”…
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…gram, made the high school all-star team for my state, and played Division III NCAA soccer for my Baptist college. Essential to my development as an athlete were coaches who were willing to address both mental and physical conditioning. At the end of a hard practice, One of my most demanding coaches would say, “It’s time to run.” If anyone dared to ask, “How many laps?” or “How long?” his regular response was, “Until I get tired.” Those practices…
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Amen and awoman. Exclusion and inclusion. Division and diversity. Religion and nonreligion. Rep. Cleaver (D-MO) ignited these flammable dichotomies delivering the House’s opening prayer for this session and ending it: “We ask it in the name of the monotheistic God, Brahma, and God known by many names and by many different faiths. Amen, and awoman.” The prayer might have been written by Saul Bellow’s Good Intentions Paving Company. But good intent…
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…s is all he’s offering. pic.twitter.com/rmhdWK6ZAO — Mark Elliott (@markmobility) August 28, 2017 What I mean is, Joel Osteen is not selling the preferential option for the poor. Your best life is not being flooded out of your house — ProfB (@AntheaButler) August 28, 2017 Whatever one’s opinion about Osteen, the Twitter storm above Lakewood Church perpetuated misconceptions about disaster response—namely, that all faith communities are naturally a…
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…rthodox Church’s practice of full-immersion infant baptism, including a petition urging the Romanian church to change its practice. The Romanian Patriarch has said no such changes will occur. But neither the incident (no matter how tragic) nor the reaction (no matter how expected) is what I’m interested in here. What interests me is how differently the incident has been reported in the Western media than in traditionally Orthodox countries, and th…
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