Religion Dispatches
…yman, about a gay Mormon missionary in Italy, was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best of 2011, and my latest, Marginal Mormons, just received a starred review from Kirkus.) I also marched with the Mormons for Marriage Equality contingent this year in Seattle’s Gay Pride parade, amazed to see compassionate Mormons with signs proclaiming “Sorry we’re late!” I belong to Affirmation, an organization for LGBTQ Mormons. I still have my triple combination on a…
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…merican political fundamentalism. Sharlet, who has since become one of the best journalists covering American religion today (and a columnist for Religion Dispatches), got a remarkable scoop some years back. An acquaintance invited him into Ivanwald, the community in Arlington, Virginia, that exposed him to a network of which few outsiders are aware. He calls it “The Family,” though it goes by several names; some incorporated, others not. Beginnin…
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…ver I went—in my backpack to school, biking through my neighborhood. At my best friend’s house, we marched around his yard and the woods behind his house pretending we were preachers prophesying the end of the world. It gave me a thrilling sense of power to possess this secret knowledge that everyone else was too blind to see. Whether as a prop in playacting or simply toted around my pre-adolescent life, having the white inscrutable Bible close at…
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…aders? Sexual purity movements, past and present, are not ultimately about promoting a biblical view of sexuality. They are about explaining large-scale culture crises (e.g. Anglo-Saxon decline, the Cold War, changing gender roles and sexual mores) and providing a formula for overcoming those crises. Today’s movement is laden with a therapeutic rhetoric that presents these choices as the best choices for those who seek to conform their behaviors t…
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…llowing summation: “While it might seem that ‘creationism’ is an effort to promote an alternative ‘science,’ it is in fact rooted in evangelical apologetics and epistemology. It’s the linchpin of evangelicals’ presuppositionalism, which argues that there can be only one source of knowledge: God’s revealed word. All other claims to knowledge (other religions, science, philosophy, even history not grounded in the Bible) is false as it is based in or…
Read More…rpretation on the part of those who claim that the Bible is clear.) To the best of my knowledge—and I am no Hebrew Bible scholar—the Hebrew is something like “the baby comes out but no harm follows,” which some people interpret as meaning that the mother miscarries but is herself unharmed; and others interpret to mean that the baby is born premature but is unharmed. So they get in discussions, as people do about Bible translations, in which they m…
Read More…ssive,” and says he overlooks the majority of biblical scholars. He’s also particularly peeved by Savage’s description of biblical perspectives of slavery: “If we want to have a debate let’s do it civilly,” he says. “Let’s look at the best scripture scholar. Sam Harris is not one of the best scripture scholars.” I wouldn’t go so far as to say someone who invites you into their home is lacking civility when they quote a writer you don’t like. Check…
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…D’Souza, David Horowitz, and Laura Ingraham, most of which have made it to best-seller lists. In a 2002 essay in The American Prospect titled “Hillary Was Right,” journalist Nicholas Confessore characterized Regnery as the “lifestyle press for conservatives, preferred printer of presidential hopefuls, and venerable publisher of books for the culture wars.” Since the advent of the Iraq War, Regnery has added defense of the Bush administration, prom…
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…tary, and national security. That’s the one area where McCain consistently bests his opponent in the polls. It’s only his claim to experience on these issues that are keeping him competitive. That does not mean the voters prefer McCain’s war policies. Since last February, when it became clear that the Arizona senator would be the GOP’s nominee, the pattern has not changed: Even when a comfortable majority of those polled support Obama’s policy — w…
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…-oriented popular culture, especially music. Planned Parenthood is perhaps best understood as representing the larger successes of liberal feminism, the movement primarily responsible for legalizing abortion. Rock for Life does not see abortion as a women’s rights issue; to them it is a social and cultural issue which affects everyone. Even though the group readily engages the issues of unwed mothers and teen pregnancy, they frame their argument s…
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