Religion Dispatches
…d the number of skeletons—reclining on lawn chairs, sprouting up from the ground, beckoning from the shadows—has transformed the suburban landscape into a set for a George Romero film. In addition, and beyond bland suburbia, monsters, ghosts, skeletons, vampires, and other playful dead inhabit stores and sell products, entertain across the television dial, and instill a dreadfully pleasurable sense of anticipation for the start of trick-or-treatin…
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…n by introducing an invocation to Patanjali at the beginning of each yoga class, though he insisted that while yoga was a part of an ancient South Asian yoga transmission it was not specific to any religious tradition and was universally accessible. In 1975, Iyengar established the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute, named after his wife who had died in 1973. The Institute, which functioned as the center for teacher training, greatly augm…
Read More…ghpoint, but rather as members of a heretical and unchristian faith. For a number of reasons, including Mitt Romney’s presidential run in 2012, those impulses have been largely diminished. But evangelical worries about Mormonism remain. That Mormons have so thoroughly repudiated Donald Trump while American evangelicalism wrestles with its complicated relationship with him only elevates evangelical leaders’ concerns about the strength of their fait…
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…ho say, ‘Creationism and intelligent design belong in history or religion class, but in my classroom I only teach science. Besides, I’ve got too much information to cover as it is.’ And there’s the rub: science is taught simply as information, as a collection of facts, and as if these facts exist in an ethical vacuum not connected to young Americans’ lives. Not only is this false, but it sets up a tension, a conundrum for these folks living in thi…
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…wanted to interview these people but I refrained from intruding into their Juneteenth experience. The small number of White individuals, couples, and families often looked uncomfortable navigating the happy, jubilant, celebratory mass of Black bodies regaled in red, black, green, and gold. Was this a South Carolina anomaly? I doubt it. According to one poll, 51% of Americans had no plan to celebrate (and more than half of those respondents declare…
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…hip hop are the devil’s music with no redeeming features. But the growing number of artists and outlets for Christian rap (like the Web site Holy Culture) are challenging many stereotypes and perceptions about how entertainment and evangelization mix to bring a distinctly Christian message to young folks today. And in the recent efforts by conservative Christians to shape the content of educational textbooks in Texas, country and western music ha…
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…w, while 55% of Americans as a whole have a favorable view of Israel, that number jumps to 80% among White evangelicals. And further, among evangelicals who support Israel, up to 50% have suggested End Times prophecies are part of their motivation. There are surely some whose uncritical support of Israel is motivated by End Times prophecies, though there’s significant disagreement on that point. What I would argue instead is that Christian Zionist…
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…ospel and Jesus’ commitment to the poor and marginalized. It threatens the last fifty years of progress with regard to civil rights, economic equity, a fair immigration policy, and especially a woman’s right to choose,” said Linda Pinto of CORPUS, an organization that represents married Catholic priests. For many Catholics this rejection of bedrock Catholic values—and what it means for the country as a whole—is the source of much of the anxiety ar…
Read More…major problems with this argument: first, it’s factually inaccurate — the numbers are simply wrong. While Democrats experienced significant losses compared to the last mid-term election in 2006, which was a good year for Democrats across the board, Sapp overstates the losses by a factor of two. The actual decreases in support between 2006 and 2010 for Democratic candidates in the House were 8 points among all white Protestants (37 percent to 29 p…
Read More…en the electoral battle to establish civil equality for LGBT people and a classroom of children “voting” on the gender of a cat. After massive expressions of protest from Mormon and non-Mormon LGBT advocates and allies, Packer’s speech was revised for web publication, and a Church spokesman offered a statement—incredibly progressive by LDS standards and timetables—that denounced bullying and acknowledged gay people as gay (rather than using the co…
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