Religion Dispatches
…bborn optimism of Taylor, but I get downright pissed when I encounter what can only be called a blissed-out reading of Taylor by someone who should know better. To frame modernity as a profusion of choice leaves the very concept of choice unexamined. And this has always been my fear about the reception of Taylor’s tome. As Saba Mahmood has suggested, Taylor does take into account how attitudes, conventions, and sensibilities play a role in the mak…
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…,800 deaths occurring each year due to lack of Medicaid expansion in North Carolina. He cautions us to avoid the path of political expediency and to envision and struggle towards the reign of God here on earth. He questions why progressives gave up using the word “welfare” when it’s in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and why even President Obama won’t use the word “poor” when it’s one of the most prominent words and themes in the Bible. I am…
Read More…itions,” he said. But an advocate of change pointed to steps taken by Anglicans in Canada and Scotland, saying, “We are simply waiting until the voice of the hardline conservatives is too old and too tired to speak any more,” he said. “I think that time will come.” Italy: Civil Unions Bill Passes, Catholic Archbishop Warns of ‘Creeping Fascism’ Prime Minister Matteo Renzi called a confidence vote to force parliamentary action on a civil unions bil…
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…white evangelicals. Yes, I am bitter. I am tired. I am broken. This battle is for those who have strength, who have hope. I teach the history of American religion and African American religion. I know better than to have hope in this nation to heal its original sin of slavery and racism….
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…pulation of New Orleans not decreased by almost 30 percent (a majority African American), there would be no Beasts of the Southern Wild. Also, by coincidence, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil blowout occurred on the first day of shooting the film in April of 2010. As Zeitlin puts it, “The oil spill happening created this sort of strange, life imitates art on set… The whole time you would wake up in the morning and check the oil and it would get closer…
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…gistered in Professor Bott’s classes. (Eleven are registered for BYU’s African-American history course this semester.) Professors at BYU routinely find themselves having to address racist and sexist content taught in Bott’s classes, and many are outraged and embarrassed by his rogue remarks to the Washington Post, say sources at the university. “Dr. Bott does not speak for BYU or the Church and his views are his own,” one religion faculty member t…
Read More…either entirely solid nor porous. The better metaphor might be No Exit with a pastor and an atheist damned to each other’s company. These cases have huge implications for American religion, but regardless of which way they go, expect more litigation….
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…rump, claiming that he’s the best candidate for women. Apocalyptic preaching isn’t new, and Bakker is appealing to a very particular subculture. Still, his long career points to a market for these messages, and his invocations of the 2016 election point to the way that political unease can offer a marketing opportunity. In 2016, Americans clearly feel a lot of confusion, uncertainty, anger, and fear about whatever lies ahead. For someone like Bakk…
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…ng] that evangelicals were a voting bloc. That made sense to journalists because Catholics were a voting bloc for John F. Kennedy in 1960—so surely evangelicals must have been a voting bloc for Jimmy Carter. That wasn’t the case at all. Some of the leading, most powerful, influential evangelical leaders were actually for Gerald Ford. There was a lot of diversity among evangelicals themselves that got masked by being lumped together in the polls as…
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…lical and patriotic basis. Webster made important contributions to an American educational system which kept the nation on a Christian Constitutional course for many years. So, here’s the thing: Maher mocks people for their antiquated beliefs though he never moves beyond an antiquated definition of religion himself. He borrows the same viewpoints of religion that all the way-out interviewees have. He is indignant that people actually believe in an…
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