Religion Dispatches
…l students every semester, “we bracket our own beliefs and ideas so we can better understand others.” When I tell a stranger that I study religion in America the first question is always “What do you plan to do with that?” But the second question always begins, “so, what do you think about…” What do I think? I bracket what I think. That’s the point. Sometimes I try to bend the question to some neutral space where I can offer a well-informed opinio…
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…ot pushover language. If people take 10A seriously, the exams will be even better than before.” We Take Our Position Not in Spite of Scripture, but Because of It Advocates of 10A point to a multi-pronged approach to religious issues at the heart of the debate. First and foremost, the pro-inclusion argument is grounded in scripture. In a statement to commissioners of the Donegal Presbytery in Pennsylvania during their vote on 10A, Dykers-Koenig sa…
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…nists and others have pushed us to re-examine; a boundary that is likewise central to our debates about the separation of church and state. Whether one agrees with courts that sentenced Kervorkian to prison for murder, or with the laws that required this, much has changed since the Michigan pathologist attached his voice to a social movement. He did not start it, nor will it end with his death. And yet, the death of ‘Dr. Death’ reminds us all of t…
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…t the medium fits the theological message, which hovers in the oscillation between the sweep of cosmic history (the film stretches from the dawn of time until the eschaton, although most of it centers on the family narrative) and the infinitesimal yet infinitely significant drama of human affairs. This is familiar territory, particularly for Americans, fed as we are on a dueling diet of Protestantism and humanism. One is reminded of Wilder’s Our T…
Read More…y movement; earlier this year, was awarded the “All American Award” by the Central Texas Tea Party. Moore’s underlying philosophy of law is that only God and the Bible can be the source of moral authority. Moore has long been involved with the work of the Christian Reconstructionist group Vision Forum, including serving as one of the speakers for its Witherspoon School of Law. The occasional four-day seminar on biblical law (open only to men, by t…
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…n the book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible. All of that computed to sometime between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. With the help of a publicist, Joshua Himes, Miller garnered thousands of followers; at least fifty thousand according to some estimates. Many, like Camping’s followers, left their jobs and dispossessed themselves of earthly goods in preparation for the end. So fevered were the speculations that Horace Greeley, publisher of the New…
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…larly in the academia, following the global financial crisis. The dialogue between the Dalai Lama, frequently criticized by the Chinese government as a closet separatist, and the students, which lasted for nearly three hours, allowed the Tibetan leader to give Chinese students a very different impression than what they are used to hearing from their own government. I know that one day they will be leading China. (Twenty or thirty years ago US-educ…
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…we take God’s mystery seriously, then we can never know. I think there are better questions that we can be answering: What does a particular vision of God do to those who submit to it and to those who won’t submit to it? What difference is my version of God making? Who is it harming? In one of his books, Kaufman writes, “The central question for theology… is a practical question. How are we to live? To what should we devote ourselves? To what caus…
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…t.” Wood’s novel is just such a juicy, delectable stew. Many of the book’s central ideas circle around heretical views on religion. But contrary to its title, the book is not a straightforward piece of literary God-hatred (what I have termed misotheism). Instead, the protagonist, Tom Bunting, is at once an anti-theist when he identifies himself as a “rebel… against inherited religion”; he’s a plain atheist when he affirms that “I don’t believe th…
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…you ever have questions regarding who I am or what I believe, please feel free to ask me. It will be through open dialog that we will get to know each other!” He leveraged his good-natured spirit in politics, and was elected to the city council of San Carlos, and from there, to the mayor’s office. In that position, he did what every American mayor does, he fought with the Firemen’s Union. In all his activities, he remained committed to his faith….
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