Religion Dispatches
…, the truth is, the church, like any human institution, changes and adapts to present circumstances, sometimes better than others. Given the magnitude of the changes being currently experienced in American society, the best hope for white American Christianity might be to just leave it all behind, and wait to see what new thing God will bring about in its place….
Read More…pposition to all discrimination, violence, and threats of violence against Americans based on their faith. We call on elected leaders and our fellow Americans to condemn such unconscionable acts in the strongest possible terms and to work with us to defeat them.” “[G]overnment must always respect and protect the bedrock principle that one’s rights as a citizen should never depend upon one’s religious identity, beliefs, or peaceful practices.” But…
Read More…the close ties between these organizations and the apocalyptic wing of the American evangelical world — and the American Jewish establishment bears blame for glorifying that relationship, as well as for its role in the destruction of democracy in Israel, and of liberal Zionism. (For example, I have reported on two of the organizations Beinart discusses, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major American…
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…o look at positions very much in the minority is equally revealing: 42% of Americans think that society has become “too soft and feminine.” 40% believe that newcomers pose a threat to American society 31% think that “God intended America to be a new promised land where European Christians could create a society that could be an example to the rest of the world.” 28% believe the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from former president Dona…
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…da. You expect to see Cubans there, but you’ll also find a huge Venezuelan American community, a huge Nicaraguan American community, a huge Puerto Rican American community—all there for Trump. One of the most militant rallies I’ve seen. But elsewhere it inoculates everyone from the R-word: How can Kyle Rittenhouse be racist when some of his best friends are Black? How can we be racist when we love Candace Owens? That’s exactly how Eric Metaxas int…
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…a course of action that isn’t hypocritical and arbitrary, U.S. scholars of American Studies pledge to “boycott” American academic institutions (e.g., give up their salaries) if those institutions tacitly or explicitly, through investment or research grants, for instance, supported U.S. violations of human rights—occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, drone strikes, NSA monitoring, Guantanamo Bay, Jim Crow incarceration patterns, immigration walls an…
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…he early afternoon, cameras in hand. It is not uncommon for tourists to outnumber monks in the debate courtyards during this time. This is obviously disruptive, making a spectacle out of a serious educational pursuit. Monastic response to the Chinese government policy of limiting monastic enrollments is at least in part the result of a clash between the secular, materialist, security-concerned worldview of the Chinese state, and the religious, tra…
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…tails ties to the Reichsbürger milieu. Experts attribute the stark rise in numbers to a heightened awareness and the agencies’ attempts to reduce the number of unreported cases. The conservative Minister of the interior of the previous Merkel administration, Horst Seehofer, had always refused to conduct a study of right-wing sentiments in the police and military, in spite of the warnings of social scientists who urged him to commission one. For ye…
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…the impact that the concept of personal spirituality has had on organized American Judaism. Americans today feel much freer to explore ceremonial and ritual practices that intrigue them regardless of what their community thinks of those particular ideas. This has allowed Jews to move in a number of different directions, including seemingly contradictory ones. I found some of these contradictory impulses fascinating. For example, there have been a…
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…ns have become too progressive. Of course, these are the most innocuous of American converts. American Orthodoxy has also managed to become the go-to religion of the alt-right, courtesy of being sufficiently medieval without being Roman Catholic. The combination of these historical realities has created an environment in which—even though there exists a progressive plurality among self-identified American Orthodox Christians—public statements that…
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