Religion Dispatches
…re placing huge political and historical importance on a belief in individual salvation, as opposed to the collective salvation envisioned by liberation theology. But when it comes to worshipping God, religious right leaders insist that individual prayer and praise is not enough; Americans have what you might call a collective duty, as a nation, to acknowledge our dependence on God. At one level, you could view Beck and Barton’s attacks on liberat…
Read More…Left Behind novels are being played out before our eyes. Pastors and evangelical leaders literally locked arms with all faiths, including Imams, in a spiritual endeavor despite the clear biblical warnings of II Corinthians 6:14… The Mormon Church is now rejoicing over the public relations success that these undiscerning evangelical leaders have handed the Mormon Church by uniting with Glenn Beck in the two events that were promoted as spiritual.…
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…bject of abuse is probably the same in any religious community,” says Michael Salomon, a Long Island psychiatrist, who has just finished working on an as-yet-unpublished book about sexual abuse in the Orthodox world. “Different religions use different justifications for not reporting,” he says. “But it comes down to the theory that religious issues should be handled within the religious community, even though the powers that be within the communit…
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…to the struggles of women, African Americans, and GLBTQ citizens. On a global scale, however, secularism most certainly is an issue of civil rights and of human rights. And it’s important to note that the suppression of religious dissent online is being carried out not just by government authorities but also by private corporations. During the Innocence riots, for instance, Google restricted YouTube access to the video in India, Indonesia, Malays…
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…and early adolescent years, I had the misfortune of attending several evangelical white Christian schools. As I neared the 8th grade, the last school where I was enrolled (which for the record had a quota of how many black students it would accept) proved to be the most damaging to my psyche. For the subsequent three years, in a million PTSD-inducing ways, I would be regularly reminded that my Black life was either worth very little or that it was…
Read More…less horrible about the church than in the darkest days of the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal, which had Boston at its epicenter. That’s a pretty low bar, but of course no one denies that Francis is a change for the better. As Jon O’Brien, head of Catholics for Choice, told The Guardian, Francis isn’t so much “a breath of fresh air as someone who has gone into the Vatican with an oxygen tank strapped to his back. He’s got the church out of a ver…
Read More…sistent underestimation of Mormon organizational capacity and discipline. Well-meaning, politically savvy, liberal friends took one look at my wild, puffy eyes during fall 2008 and would say—trying to be comforting—“I know, I know, the evangelicals are at it too” or “don’t worry, there just aren’t that many of you Mormons in California.” Ignorance. It is precisely this kind of insularity and ignorance that a progressive public conversation a…
Read More…at is hardly universal. Sephardic Jews, Jews from the former Soviet Union, Israelis living in America, Jews by choice, most Jews of color, and Jews in interfaith families do not share this narrative. Of course, this history is open to all who seek to claim it, all of those groups included. But it’s curious that BtA explains its social justice commitments not in the age-old teachings of the Jewish tradition (e.g., “You shall not mistreat a stranger…
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