Religion Dispatches
…understanding of the intersections of religion and popular culture, I also looked forward to Perry’s new film because I wanted to see how his theological message of hope and faith would sustain his new efforts to address a global concern: the financial crisis. But the centralizing of the white family—which is a departure from Perry’s traditional filmic presentation—not only distanced Perry from his usual target audience of African Americans, it pl…
Read More…ng not in the direct line of the camera, which gives it a bit of a I-can’t-look-you-in-the-eye feel to it. It’s Pawlenty’s way of reminding social conservatives that he’s with them on abortion, gay marriage, and the intertwining of religion and politics, without having to sign the Vander Plaats document. Pawlenty must be counting on that hurting him in Iowa, but helping him later in states less dominated by . . . Bob Vander Plaats. Pawlenty’s poll…
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…kes his Christian faith seriously. Christianity is “the prism with which I look at the whole world,” Thiel told a gathering hosted by the Newbigin House of Studies last year. The PayPal co-founder, who was raised evangelical, has participated in dialogues about Christianity and technology with Biblical scholar N.T. Wright and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. He has written about Eden for the conservative Christian journal First Things, and h…
Read More…tion that post-Mormons might actually be curious about alcohol—it makes us look like we “leaves the church because [we] ‘want to sin’”!—apparently we must also continue to live according to Mormons standards, eschewing coffee, alcohol, R-rated movies and any sexual relationship but married heterosexual monogamy—God forbid (heh) we try to see if the non-Mormon world actually knows anything about socializing or community or relationships or art. In…
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…nal differences. So, I decided to use my mother as the narrative thread to look at how certain Catholics negotiated the changes of the past century. I wanted to shift the discussion to girls, women, nuns, and parish life because the sex abuse scandals had yet again reduced Catholicism to a story of boys, men, priests, and bishops. I also thought that it was about time that religious historians take seriously mobile, middle-class life in the suburb…
Read More…ntly. He talks about the way we read someone like Augustine, post-James—we look for the saint’s experiences, his feelings, as a way to understand his religion. But this is a mistake, he says: “It would be as if a physicist, after much arduous intellectual effort, had a moment of insight into the nature of sub-atomic matter and felt a great thrill at this discovery”—and we rush for the keyboard to report that a scientist did a bunch of research and…
Read MoreCulture Warriors Exporting Homophobia A couple articles this past week look at the work of anti-gay religious groups overseas. The National Journal’s Alex Seitz-Wald gives an overview of American evangelicals’ efforts to encourage passage of anti-gay laws around the world. Among the items mentioned is the work of Scott Lively and others to launch an anti-gay group in Latvia that believes “there is a war between Christians and homosexuals.” At th…
Read More…their scrupulous honesty… but that’s beyond polling’s purview.) So it does look grim for the Godless, unless you take a closer look at the data. The relevant question from the survey, “powered by Barna Group,” is this one: Question: For the year that just ended – 2013 – what was the total amount of money that you donated to all charities and non-profit organizations, including churches and religious organizations, if any? Of course we can’t kno…
Read More…mp—on the Trail of the Ultra-Rich Hijacking American Politics, an insidery look at the post-Citizens United world of political mega-donors. With several of the highly recognizable names—particularly casino mogul Sheldon Adelson—being Jewish, has their money bought them influence among Jewish voters? With regard to Adelson, the editorial contends, his early support of Newt Gingrich “didn’t really work. Gingrich lost the primary, and the protracted,…
Read More…act this way? Because they can. Because they pay no real political price. Look at Netanyahu’s own career. In 1989, as deputy Israeli foreign minister, he so angered the George H. W. Bush administration that James Baker banned him from the State Department. After Bibi’s first meeting with Bill Clinton, Clinton reportedly screamed, “Who the fuck does he think he is? Who’s the fucking superpower here?” In 2011, after Netanyahu flew to the White Hous…
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