Religion Dispatches
…story will affect his political influence remains an open question. In the Nashville Tennessean, a disappointed Barton fan who hoped to see him at a 9/12 rally, and who had The Jefferson Lies on an audio CD, admitted that “the book wasn’t as good as some of his other previous works,” but hoped that “the current controversy won’t undermine his credibility. ‘It’s bad because it’s not typical of him,’ she said. ‘He’s usually so rock solid on history….
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…furrow their brows and wonder how a radicalized political movement has captured their parishioners, the real story is the more enduring influence of white evangelical theology and institutions themselves. Something is wrong at the root. When Southern Baptists gather in Nashville for their annual meeting later this month, this deeper history is unlikely to be on the agenda. Russell Moore’s private anguish revealed that white evangelicals voting fo…
Read More…ed knocking on the doors of a bunch of the huge Christian record labels in Nashville. Within a few months, when I was twenty-one, I signed a deal with Flicker Records [EMI, now part of Capitol]. I had some good radio success, toured with major Christian music artists like TobyMac, Mercy Me, and Jeremy Camp, and did a lot of major youth events around the country, including Acquire The Fire and various Christian music festivals every year. I had a d…
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…dissemination of homophobic posters “is apparently being coordinated by a number of neo-Nazi organisations.” Junkee also explains that the government’s decision to hold a mail survey, rather than a formal referendum at the ballot box, means that election laws don’t apply, and “there is no requirement for campaigners to authorize any material with a name or address. That means any individual or organization can anonymously create posters or advert…
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…that gavel. It will be hard not to hit her with it,” he told a crowd at a Nashville fundraising event in 2021. Meanwhile, Republicans have cynically used this act of political violence to flood their media systems with disinformation about an alleged surge in violent crime ahead of the midterms—a narrative based not on facts, but to rile up their base with racialized fear-mongering—and to blame the attack on Pelosi on “rising crime rates.” (It do…
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…r the president to make a last-minute speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington D.C. last weekend. For a man who often seems to operate according to instinct more than strategy, this was a calculated move. He needed to shore up his support among his most devoted base. In his speech, the president explained his policy change in Turkey and Syria as a choice to bring home American troops. “I don’t think our soldiers should be there for the next…
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…cantly, the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) in Nashville on February 22nd. While the name sounds broadly religious, NRB was created by leaders of communications outlets that operate specifically in the White evangelical world. According to its website, NRB, founded in 1944, “exists to represent the Christian broadcasters’ right to communicate the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world.” In his rambling 75-minu…
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…e delivered Wednesday at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville. NRB is an international evangelical organization whose board members include John Fuller of far-right powerhouse Focus on the Family and Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association, a Southern Poverty Law Center designated anti-LGBT hate group. Featuring predictable dog whistles about “federalism” (i.e., “states’ rights”) and “the corporate—or ‘mainstream’—pre…
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…e on the Bible, the Boss, and the Backwoods Barbie: sin and salvation from Nashville to New Jersey?) The folks behind Church Basement Roadshow do get specific about theology, and since they were good enough to show up at my synagogue Saturday morning (noshing not davening), I wanted to end this update on religion and culture with a mention of their project. Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt,and Mark Scandrette are three leaders of the emergent church moveme…
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…e theory then becomes something we’re using to blind ourselves. The recent Nashville Statement seems to fit that definition of starting with a theory and not worrying about how it effects the targets of those words. What’s your opinion of this statement? If you’re going to make authoritative pronouncements on matters that tangibly impact the lives of human beings, you have the credibility and authority to do that only if you are paying deep and su…
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