Religion Dispatches
…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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…ns/Simon & Schuster), Freddoso’s book joined Corsi’s on the New York Times best-seller list. As a Political Research Associates’ Right Web profile of Regnery points out, the company, founded by Henry Regnery in 1947 in Chicago, and [i]nitially affiliated with the University of Chicago’s “Great Books” series, … became a leading publisher of old-guard, conservative writers such as Russell Kirk, James Burnham, and William F. Buckley, Jr.“ After being…
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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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…this analysis is not an inherently apolitical exercise, but it is, at its best, one disentangled from theological prescription. Somehow, without a God (but not, as we will see, without a powerful creed) John McCain has forged for himself a moral mode, a discourse, a rhetoric of righteousness. What, then, ought it matter whether he is or is not, technically speaking, Christian? It apparently matters to him, and to his opponent, and maybe it matter…
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…casting is new. Again, many regard it as a post-civil rights phenomenon at best, or the co-opting of the black church by the white religious right at worst. But the confluence of mass media and Afro-Protestantism dates back to religious race records of the 1920s and is as “authentically black” as James Brown. From prominent Pentecostal preachers like Leora Ross, F.W. McGee, and Mother Rosa Artimus Horn during the interwar period to C.L. Franklin a…
Read More…n. You see this with sex: If we don’t vilify anyone who deviates from the ideal of celibacy or heterosexual lifelong marriage, the thinking goes, then you may as well endorse 24/7 exploitative, unkind, compulsive, unhealthy sex… the sort we imagine is undertaken by those we hate and dehumanize. Likewise with hell. There’s this fear that if we don’t say for certain that some people are hellbound, then nobody will have any compelling reason to act k…
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…n the most obnoxious and ridiculous views must be tolerated. Bad ideas are best conquered with good ideas rather than with repression. Yet, the anti-civil liberties orientation of Christian politicians and pundits appears to be shared by several prominent atheists like Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens. For them and their followers, as for Trump and Cruz, radical Islam is best countered through jailing imams, preventing incendiary preac…
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…a key reason Democrats display such a lack of imagination in this area. At best, they give a nod to other religions while leaving Christianity front and center. The Christian privilege that permeates American society and politics needs to be dismantled just as much as White privilege, male privilege, and cis-het privilege in the pursuit of a genuinely democratic future. If Democrats hope to be the more inclusive party they can do so precisely by d…
Read More…model, is severely restrained in its authority over economic activity. The best check on the depravity of individuals who make up the civil government is the decentralization of authority into the distinct spheres; the best check on the depravity of human beings in the economy is the decentralization of the market created by competition. Historian Michael McVicar has this called this “theocratic libertarianism”: it creates an economic zone free of…
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…with their inability for critical self-reflection and critique are not the best champions of healthy life orientations. I remain hopeful that collaboration and partnership will be difficult to achieve but not impossible. I am not calling for a naïve stance marked by blindness—either to the deep dimensions of our differences, or to the great harm that theistic (and atheistic) perspectives can produce when they nurture bad ethics. I left Burbank thi…
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