Religion Dispatches
…erverts it. Regarding its being a panacea, I show in the book how even the best-designed, most robust research on mindfulness is overhyped. Regarding the pernicious effects of self-focus, those are general in a species that needs a thriving polity and society to prosper. Is there anything you had to leave out? As I wrote, I felt more friendly toward authentic forms of original mindfulness, so I found myself leaving out some of the scorn I original…
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…r has that kind of thriller-movie series of events This new version of end-times thinking is different in kind than this millennia-worth of end-times thinking, because it’s scientific. It’s based on evidence. These are scenarios that can genuinely come true, although some of them are without a doubt quite speculative at the moment. That’s true. Some are more far-fetched. Even if there’s a slight possibility that there might be something like some…
Read More…ls and the preachings of the “Gospel’s Own Party.” The GOPers tout the old-time religion while violating its biblical precepts, or—to be more exact—the particular biblical precepts that Meyerson approves. He has an easy time finding contradictions between Republican policies and particular verses in the Bible—who wouldn’t? And of course Meyerson skips those verses in the Bible that Republicans could cite, which contradict his own political prefere…
Read More…ighlights an issue that liberal American Jews have been raising for a long time, only to be dismissed by conservatives as insufficiently supportive of Israel and its evangelical allies. The uproar over Bush’s speech, says JI, “has the potential to awaken the Jewish community to the debilitating approach of Jewish leaders towards Israel-evangelical relations which continues to blindly follow the credo of ‘the evangelicals are our best friends, don’…
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…” appears 11 times in the party’s platform; “religion” or “religious” nine times; “church” two times; and “clergy” one time. RD’s Peter Montgomery updated the score in these pages yesterday. Consultant Burns Strider, who largely makes his living helping Democrats talk the talk, made the whole affair in Charlotte sound like one big prayer meeting. After noting that he’s “not into word counts,” Strider still found it necessary to remind readers tha…
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…Holland also claims seven novels to his name, several TV documentaries, a number of radio broadcasts, a play or two, and a translation of Herodotus’s Histories, all the while holding down a staff position with The Guardian. Taken as a whole, Holland’s entire oeuvre seems a colossal myth-making enterprise geared to reintroducing the West to its own formation. Taken in itself, Dominion often maddeningly, sometimes entertainingly, rambles through tw…
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…ere is no middle ground.” Each year, one or two of her students challenge evolution in her class. She doesn’t engage with them. Instead, she suggests they meet after class for a cup of coffee, so they can discuss their religious beliefs. The best hope, she suggested, is for evangelicals who embrace science to live well and lead by setting the best example. “Hopefully we can let some of those people see, wow, that person really is a Christian,” Epp…
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…n put forth the idea that man came from monkeys, according to the New York Times. (In fact, he said we share a common ancestor.) According to the Times, “the British Council framed the conference to seek middle ground, more than to promote confrontation. While challenging a religious society to think seriously about evolution, it emphasized the possibility of reconciling a belief in divine creation with Darwin’s theories of evolution and natural s…
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…palities appear mightier than Stringfellow could have imagined them in his time. We all know the litany: corporations becoming globalized and religions rearing once again for holy war, this time armed with dirty bombs and Predator drones. The world is warming, and the principalities render us helpless to let ourselves stop it. It is sensible to think of these as problems best handled by trained experts in economy, engineering, diplomacy, and the r…
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…back for God” and to explain how his own religious views have shifted over time. In a review of the docuseries for The Gospel Coalition, Harris expressed his empathy for survivors of abuse within IBLP while also noting that he knows “people who had positive experiences with IBLP.” Harris also critiqued the filmmakers for “equating Gothard’s genuine extremism with beliefs held by the vast majority of evangelicals,” though, much like the series’ oth…
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