Religion Dispatches
…here’s been much reaction to the Pew poll in regards to denominational viability, affiliation, and attitudes toward things such as Israel, the Holocaust, God, and religion. Interestingly, Zionism has been replaced by “caring for Israel,” which is in some ways similar, though there are important distinctions. Zionism represents a systemic Jewish experiment in identity, language, culture, and politics, while “Caring for Israel” is largely an emotion…
Read MoreA number of developments in the lawsuit against Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM) have taken place since I first covered it for RD back in early March. On May 14, a second amendment was filed to the suit: [The suit] adds three new plaintiffs, making a total of 11. Five plaintiffs are now using their real names, and the rest are pseudonyms. It accuses church leaders of conspiracy, negligence, misrepresentation and intentional infliction of emotiona…
Read More…lights the continuing growth in the number of Americans who indicate no religious affiliation, with a full 20% now answering “none” when asked “What is your religious preference?” Michael Hout and Claude S. Fisher of UCB and Mark A. Chaves of Duke drew on data from the most recent General Social Survey (GSS), which has tracked religious preference since 1972, when a mere 5% of Americans self-identified as religiously unaffiliated. The report reinf…
Read More…James Ray, prosecutor Sheila Polk played tapes of Ray discussing with participants the sweat lodge they were about to encounter—some for the first time. This is not a “weenie-ass lodge,” Ray was heard to say on the tapes, a statement he apparently held fast to as one participant passed out and fell and burned his arm on the red-hot stones. Ray asked him to come back into the lodge to finish the sweat. The trial finished its first week on Friday i…
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…, for one), the Vatican was happy to let the festivities continue. Vatican II removed a few legendary saints from the General Roman Calendar in the 1960s, but making saints like Christopher and Valentine less official did not constitute a prohibition on their veneration. Current examples of this hands-off approach abound. Since the 1980s, an apparition site at Medjugorje, Yugoslavia has been a source of concern at varying levels of church hierarch…
Read MoreCosta Rican human rights and anti-torture activist Victor Madrigal-Borloz is the new UN Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. The first expert, Vitit Muntarbhorn, resigned for health reasons after his first year in the position, which was created over the intense opposition of anti-LGBT groups and nations. Also this month, the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, Jordanian Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, described the g…
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…to the rest of the country, for every search I looked at, retirement communities search more about hell,” he writes. Each month, on average, 422 people in the US ask Google “Why did God make me ugly?” and 103 ask “Why did God make me black?” The most common God-related question, asked over 25,000 times per month in the US, is “Who created God?,” followed by that old Job-ian classic, “Why does God allow suffering?” But we should be careful here; Go…
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…anger for any institution that allies itself too closely with any given political party, a hazard that’s pronounced in the age of Trump, as the raw racial animus at his core becomes impossible to ignore for even those who were determined to avert their gaze. But that danger is especially acute for religious institutions, which face a special moral hazard in becoming too closely identified with a specific party. And, as political scientist Timothy…
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…th politics, and the frequency of intra-religious conflict (Sunni versus Shiite Muslims, Jat versus non-Jat Sikhs, upper-caste Christians versus Dalit Christians) has also played a role in India’s recent spike in social unrest. Despite the complex nature of identity politics in India, one thing is more apparent: the unease with which Indians of all faiths are dealing with the conversation about conversion, as well as its ramifications beyond the c…
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Trump, long up in the polls, stays up; Cruz is rising. What do they have in common? Savior appeal. Of the idolatrous kind. The two front-runners differ is some ways—among likely caucus voters in Iowa, Bloomberg News reports, Trump is considered stronger on managing the economy, illegal immigration, and the deficit while Cruz is stronger on leadership and persuasiveness to conservative evangelicals. But their common savior appeal tells us a great…
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