Religion Dispatches
…g, then one can see their fruits in Germany today. Last month, following a number of horrid, hateful slogans chanted at Jews (in the context of otherwise legitimate protests against Israel’s attack on Gaza), and a number of violent incidents, there was a large public vigil in Berlin to protest anti-Semitism. Among the attendees were German President Joachim Guack, members of Germany’s parliament, leaders of both of the country’s major churches, an…
Read More…al, leaving the American church with a massive money problem and shrinking numbers of parishioners on the eve of Pope Francis’ arrival. A recent study by Nicholas Bottan and Ricardo Perez-Trugila in the Journal of Public Economics revealed that, unsurprisingly, “a scandal causes a persistent decline in the local Catholic affiliation and church attendance.” “Some Catholics join other religious denominations during the first three years after a scan…
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…er story Ravitzky also tells of an opposing idea, spearheaded by the first official Rabbi of Israel, Abraham Isaac Kook, who saw the building of a state by secular, nonreligious leaders as a secretly divine process. It was taken further by his son Zvi Kook who described the state of Israel as itself divine, the throne of God in the world. It was only after these theological foundations were laid that the catastrophe of the Holocaust converted many…
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…dation by charlatans. They shared the story of “Mrs. Robert Smith,” a composite of the many documented cases of women injured by Lysol and similar products. Married “for two months, and living in a small Colorado town,” Mrs. Smith, “was turning the pages of the Ladies Home Journal” when she found an advertisement insinuating that Lysol could help prevent pregnancy. She wanted to defer having children until the couple was on firmer economic footing…
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…, more specifically, social networking and new media technology. The sheer number of channels through which HPA staff and volunteers reach out to potential members is staggering. They include old-fashioned email lists, the HPA website, the HPA blog, the HPA Ning social network, meetup.com, myspace, Livestream, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. The HPA also offers many levels of involvement—everything from simply learning about the campaigns…
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…back against that corruption, the deep state and all the rest.” Given any number of other statements by Johnson, this comment may seem unremarkable. But the transformation of Trump from a person to a symbol is the key to understanding the power of the MAGA movement and the internal logic of the upside-down world where a unanimous guilty verdict in a fair trial results in solidified support, record fundraising, and desperate Christian defenses of…
Read More…or point to evidence that a new religious left may be asserting itself. A number of progressive Christian blogs, such as Street Prophets and Faithful Democrats are afire with discussion of a different kind of marriage between religion and politics that emphasizes peace and justice issues instead of socio-moral concerns. In the baffling 2008 presidential primary season, Republican candidates aligned with the religious right failed to make much hea…
Read More…sure softball questions, few dissident voices, and reverent talk about the number of ciboria necessary to serve communion in baseball stadiums. And, we are all supposed to know what ciboria are (for the record, they are the goblet-shaped metal vessels that hold the hosts—that is, the wafers—used for communion). Catholic terminology is about the only thing used liberally in these exercises. Television hosts like Tim Russert fairly swoon over their…
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…of evolution in public schools—as they have in Kansas, Pennsylvania, and a number of other sites—or when the government imposes religiously inspired limits on stem-cell research or other scientific activities, conflict can ensue. To be sure, most evolutionary biologists either ignore religion or find it compatible with their science, but a few of them—ardent in their scientism and evangelical regarding its social implications—turn their fire on Ch…
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…g his recent visit to Jamaica, and includes specific recommendations for a number of U.S. agencies to engage in effective partnership with Jamaican government officials and cooperation with human rights advocates in civil society. Also this week, the State Department confirmed plans for Randy Berry, recently appointed special envoy for LGBT rights, to visit Uganda this summer after trips to the Caribbean, Latin America and Europe. Watch a set of v…
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