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…
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…ing their children to do the same, they could win the culture wars through numbers alone. What’s the most important take-home message for readers? My main concern about these convictions is not so much the plans for Christian dominion that Quiverfull authors and homeschooling ministries discuss, but rather that in the service of these ideas, many women are subjecting themselves to an often punishing lifestyle. Quiverfull is not just about the…
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…eliefs have been dissected over the years, the core religious beliefs of a number of White nationalist movement leaders has received far less attention. Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream Leonard Zeskind Farrar, Straus and Giroux May, 2009 I recently had the opportunity to talk with Zeskind, a friend and colleague, about his new book, the role these religious beliefs played in the d…
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…e story of a small group coming to grips with a mass cultural trauma. As a number of notable sociologists put forth in their book Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (University of California Press, 2004), society, to put it simply, can experience trauma like an individual can. As with the individual, there are a few things that make a society more vulnerable to trauma. “A society emerging from a major war, suffering from diminished economic r…
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…nature in economics. Most of the rest of my argument builds on data point number 5, focusing on how religious studies (as if that’s a monolithic thing) to date has talked about the natural world. I share the below as someone who is at the core of my training a religionist who’s vested in using education to build a better, more sustainable society. I recognize that understanding the role of religion in society is of import as we work toward this g…
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…ists. From the Ten Commandments, to the ten avatars of Vishnu (Krishna was number eight), to Buddhism’s ten precepts, religions are all about systems, ethical prescriptions—or proscriptions—and grand schemes. Order out of chaos is the name of the game. All this to suggest that the Top Ten list is obviously something deeply ingrained in the human experience. So here, without further preamble, RD’s picks for the Ten Best of 2008’s Religion Top Ten l…
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…ides casting AIDS as a pastoral challenge, reporters also depicted it as a spiritual trial, replete with heterosexual martyrs and gay saints. The former were typically women who, infected by tainted blood or bisexual male partners, went public—hoping to educate others. Saints were gay men whose personal suffering become public performances of love and religious affirmation. Sister Romana Marie Ryan was an early AIDS martyr. A “magically gifted” ki…
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…ite evangelicals view the ability of a woman to receive an abortion: These numbers lead Burge to conclude that “there’s ample reason to believe large numbers of white evangelicals don’t place a great deal of importance on abortion and don’t think it’s likely it will ever be outlawed in the United States.” Burge makes a good argument for a shift in evangelical priorities. The numbers suggest that single-issue voters on reproductive rights are less…
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…or even federal—protections aimed at combatting discrimination against any number of marginalized populations. “The cultural and political prominence of religious freedom as an American ideal draws people to it,” Wenger said. “The reason people appeal to it for all sorts of purposes is because it’s so culturally, politically, and legally powerful.” Indeed, as Wenger’s book documents in deep historical detail, the bedrock American principle has alr…
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…olls indicated that 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump. That number represented a shocking measure given who Donald Trump is. But it also fit squarely with the patterns of white evangelical support for Republican presidential candidates in all recent elections. Still, some evangelical leaders are challenging these findings. “No, the Majority of American Evangelicals Did Not Vote for Trump,” reads the headline of an article published…
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