Religion Dispatches
…l-Nur, I want to say I think about the passages about divine light nur an ‘ala nur. But alas, it’s the gender and society stuff that always gets stuck in my head, so let’s bare it naked, so to speak and see what we shall see. When I was in Indonesia I got asked more than once, why the verse that talks about zinah, adultery and fornication, starts with the female al-zaani’a, when male starters is the norm for both Arabic language in general and the…
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…88 sociologist William Swatos surveyed a group of Christians picketing the sale of pornography at 7-Eleven. 98% affirmed their belief that there was a force of “transcendent evil” involved in pornography. For many evangelicals these kinds of protests supersede mere politics: They are acts of spiritual warfare against Satan. On the other side of the protest, good and evil are not so neatly aligned. Gina Hughes, a dancer and married mother of six, o…
Read More…y are a’changin’. The synagogue where Bob Dylan had his bar mitzvah is for sale. While the Vatican may say Homer and Bart Simpson are Catholics, The Simpsons’ producer disagrees. The cartoon family regularly attends Rev. Lovejoy’s First Church of Springfield “which is decidedly Presbylutheran.” Meanwhile, apparently it is impossible to officially leave the Catholic Church. And the Archbishop of St. Paul-Minneapolis says he doesn’t want any “lukewa…
Read More…. Meanwhile, in Salt Lake City, Mormon founder Joseph Smith’s Bible is for sale. The one of a kind book carries a $1.5 million price tag and includes unique genealogical notes about the Smith family. A group of American Muslim leaders have made a YouTube video denouncing militancy. And Islamic feminists are staging “pray-ins” at various mosques in protest against the separation of women during services. Pilgrims using GPS keep missing Lourdes and…
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…ster’s appearance at a 2003 Advanced Training Institute (ATI) seminar, for sale at the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) website, Webster described how making a “commitment” to Gothard’s teachings “absolutely changed my life.” Those commitments, he went on, “are the basis for everything I do today.” Webster isn’t the only member of Congress with deep connections to Gothard. Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas), who just became chair of the Social Se…
Read More…Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was in the line of the dreaded Judge Hathorne of Salem witch trial fame (and whose notoriety was the reason for the author’s addition of a “w” to his own name), said that he was proud that the Puritans once existed, and relieved that they no longer did. And yet during the horrors of the Civil War, the pilgrims took on a new symbolic role, as Yankee historians conceptualized the origins of America not in Jamestown, Virgini…
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…nd of. Although none of my fellow attendees was masked up, several were on sale in the vendor area. Playfully called “Reformed Masks,” one featuring theologian and conservative radio personality R.C. Sproul was captioned, “What’s wrong with you people?” Another depicted televangelist Kenneth Copeland spitting at spiked Covid-19 particles with the caption, “Blow it away!” Image courtesy of the author. While the conference itself—aimed at pastors an…
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…Thee O God For a Prophet,” interspersed with video clips reflecting the escalating fear over the series of bombs in Salt Lake City, Utah, in October 1985. After the third explosion, this one in the car of Mark Hofmann, which followed two explosions the day before, the community was left terrified over whom the killer would target next. The juxtaposition between a song that celebrates the certainty of having God’s spokesperson on earth, and the anx…
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…ical origins of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Things escalated the next day, October 16, when a third bomb detonated in the car of Mark Hofmann, the documents dealer who had found and facilitated the letter’s sale, confirming the murders had more to do with Mormonism than money. Hofmann survived with critical injuries from the explosion, only to later become the prime suspect behind all three devices. Then, over the course of th…
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…ompromise.” Chicago was therefore a foretaste of what we can expect in Jerusalem as we gather in June 2018 on the tenth anniversary of the founding of this great movement and the publication of the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration. Our theme is ‘Proclaiming Christ Faithfully to the Nations’ and invitations will be going out this month. We look forward with great eagerness to another wonderful gathering as we come together in true communion unde…
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