Religion Dispatches
…f Paul, like 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians, and near the end of chapter 15 [in 1 Corinthians] he speaks as if this might happen while he is still alive. One big difference is he thought it was very, very soon from his point in time. Also, there is no reference to what Christians in our time refer to as ‘The Rapture,’ the notion that seven years before the second coming of Jesus, true-believing Christians will be taken up into heaven to be spar…
Read More…continue to find in their impressive religious and political heritage the spiritual values and ethical principles needed to co-operate in the building of a truly just and free society, marked by respect for the dignity, equality and rights of each of its members, especially the poor, the outcast and those who have no voice. At a time when so many of our brothers and sisters throughout the world yearn for liberation from the scourge of poverty, hu…
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…ero. In monasteries and convents and among the ranks of shamans, sages and spiritual warriors, gay men and women are disproportionately represented not only because those social locations have traditionally existed outside of hetero-normative institutions but also because undertaking the hero’s quest is their metabiological function. To put the matter differently: The birthing of new forms of culture at key junctures in human history is an express…
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…lamic jurists seem to have been extremely hostile to the practice until the 1300s—a period when inquisitorial systems of justice were taking hold in Europe—and one Western historian has attributed the shift to the influence of Spanish and Sicilian canonists on their Muslim counterparts. True or not, the coincidence serves to recall an important truth: the claim to act in God’s name is no guarantee against injustice. I must admit I was somewhat di…
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…d than simply a royalty check and a green-light from Showtime. “I feel the Spirit with me if I’m really disciplined,” Moore said. “When I was writing the book, I tapped into that, and I’ve definitely felt Him with me as I write this Showtime series. I’ve learned to be very respectful and humble and let these characters tell their stories through me.” If Moore’s spiritual passion enlivens his storytelling, then the narrative forms that have captiva…
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…l a gospel sensibility. I’ve written in these pages before about gospel as spiritual lingua franca in American culture. This notion is widely dispersed throughout the popular imagination and rests on a belief in gospel music as a universal language of deep spiritual feeling that, paradoxically, derives from and transcends racial history in America (incidentally, I recommend Gerardo Marti’s most recent book, Worship Across the Racial Divide, if you…
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…low. As a percentage of GDP, American taxation is at its lowest level since 1950, 14.8 percent—well below the take of other wealthy nations. More importantly, the debt problem is a byproduct of tax policies that have fueled massive inequality since the early 1980s. It cannot be solved with any moral decency without rectifying the legacy of Ronald Reagan, who led the Republican Party and many Democrats into temptation by contending that deficits do…
Read More…he American bishops in their pastoral letter, “Human Life in Our Day” (Nov. 15, 1968), even laid out the norms for licit dissent. Expression of dissent is in order “only if the reasons are serious and well founded, if the manner of the dissent does not question or impugn the teaching authority of the Church and is such as not to give scandal.” Paul VI himself, in a letter to the Congress of German Catholics (Aug. 30, 1968), stated: “May the lively…
Read More…tique was the basis for the opposition to efforts at population control (in 1975 Rushdoony wrote The Myth of Overpopulation). By 2000, in his Systematic Theology, Rushdoony wrote: “The anti-Christianity of modern humanism has led to an hatred of both God and man, and a readiness to sacrifice man to nature…. The Bible separates man from the rest of creation because man is God’s image-bearer and is called to exercise dominion. The environmentalists…
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…en. You cannot ascribe the love of children to religion. You and I are opposite in many ways. I became a Christian when I was eighteen years old by reading the Bible, and you said reading the Bible shocked the Christianity out of you. However, neither of us is indifferent to faith and that’s significant. That is a central thing for me. I have a much easier time talking to someone who believes in God (and with whom I am in total disagreement) than…
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