Religion Dispatches
…er structure was clouded in a questionable history of inappropriate sexual contact with children? Or would you seek to place your family’s treasures, time, and talents elsewhere? Would YOU tell your catholic neighbors to send their children back to the same parish and priest that allowed children to be sexually abused? Would you tell them its only a “wreck?” Or would you tell them to find another church home? Those who left New Birth came to y…
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…ttle community that we both serve. I think this conversation should be had openly. I believe clarity is a reasonable request. I imagine you are under a lot of pressure, and, just like the rest of us, you have your own set of questions and ideas about church, God and faith. I also know that as a pastor, if you happen to hold views that deviate from the evangelical script, you can find yourself at odds with the system that employs you and provides y…
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…primitive belief in contagious magic—that “things which have once been in contact with each other are always in contact.” Many pages of The Golden Bough are taken up with instances of practices that demonstrate this belief: using hair or nail clippings to control people, for example. In other words, Frazer imagined societies giving rise to rulers that were at once symbols of enormous vitality and profoundly susceptible to the possibility of some…
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…e are some good signs in this situation. First, your sister has maintained contact with you and your parents instead of shrinking her circle down to only Witnesses. Second she is allowing her children to have a relationship with you. So my suggestion is simple: don’t blow it. Adults get to choose their own religion. That your sister chose something new and not to your liking you is just something you are going to have to live with. Parents also ge…
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…years. I came about the time that folks from Burma began arriving in large numbers and uniting in membership with Crescent Hill, and much of my time in those early years was spent trying to figure out how in the world we might be able to be a unified body that includes people who don’t speak English, who have a completely foreign background and cultural experience. It took a lot of hard work but we reached a place a number of years ago where, whil…
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…region. We were instructed to pray for rain, to await salvation via C-130 aircraft with Modular Airborne Firefighting Systems,* to understand that there must be some larger reason God had in mind for all of this, to remember those in need, to volunteer our time and resources, to be thankful for the brave firefighting soldiers on the front of this raging land war, and to be assured that ultimately we would rebuild bigger and better than ever. Thes…
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…Kulture. There are Taqwacore groups in Scotland and London, but no one has contacted us to do a tour. Most of them discourage us about setting foot in Bradford lest we become the biggest pariahs since Salman fucking Rushdie. SK: See BU. HR: Isn’t every good qalandar a pariah? BU: True. Q: Much is being made of TQ, but heavy metal, if not punk, have been a part of the musical politics of the Arab World for some time (for example, see here). What is…
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…s and uncertainties wrought by the recent uprisings in the Arab world have opened up a precious space for an unprecedented public debate. Some Arab media had already paved the way, but as Islamists rose to power in post Arab Spring countries and the grinding civil war lingers in Syria, new fears about the erosion of these critical gains have surfaced, prompting activists, journalists and other social actors to rally around creative projects of soc…
Read More…r LGBTs: Same-sex couples are able to legally marry in 19 states and D.C., Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico City, French Guiana, the French islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Martin and St. Barthelemy and the Caribbean Netherlands that includes the islands of Bonaire, Saba and St. Eustatius. Lawmakers in the Mexican state of Coahuila on Sept. 1 overwhelmingly approved a same-sex marriage bill. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos i…
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…er urban churches—and some of those that have a longer history in a particular city—are now congregations of mostly young creative types who live in the vicinity. What will happen when urban hipster churches, like Hillsong, Oasis and RealityLA, come into contact with other churches and urban ministries? (Indeed, do they ever come into contact or do they each maintain their own spheres of involvement?) And what will become of the Christian urban pr…
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