Religion Dispatches
…ly divide our camp. Don’t get me wrong, how an evangelical Christian is to live in the world is of foremost importance. But something has to give before these discussions once again prove fruitful. No Place to Go So what is evangelicalism today? As Roger Olson points out, it’s hard to define. I too, have largely stopped using the term when talking with those outside of the movement. In seminary I learned about, and found hope in, David Bebbington’…
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…afraid. I didn’t want to risk offending people who had not figured out the politics of hair, even if they had deployed it almost as surely as sanctification had been used to cut the wheat from the chaff. Watching Good Hair brought up all of those memories, and more, from the research of my book. The Marriage of Hinduism and Black Hair Care Apart from being a good film, Good Hair has a religious subtext that is important to look at within the conte…
Read More…ri Chinmoy Ghose: “When the Power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” Trungpa Rinpoche, Ram Das, and Ghose provide a dose of spiritual humanism that bookends a film filled with conspiracy narratives of corruption and manipulation. Christianity, religion, war, economies; these are all meant to divide and conquer humanity, the film argues, and the solution to the suffering they cause lies in a metaphysical vision of univ…
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…matters. Followers of Van Til (including his former students Bahnsen and Rousas John Rushdoony, and Rushdoony’s son-in-law, Gary North) adopted this “presuppositionalism” as a doctrine, with all its implications for the role of religion in political life. Recapturing Institutions for Jesus Reconstruction writers regard the history of Protestant politics since the early years of the Reformation as having taken a bad turn, and they are especially un…
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…res of Orientalist pulp. After Artis is frozen, Jeffrey and Ross return to New York, where Jeffrey becomes involved with a woman named Emma. Emma has an adopted Ukrainian son, called Stak. Stak has taught himself Pashtun with which he chats to a taxi-driver who may or may not be a former member of the Taliban—cue ominous music. Sure enough, Stak disappears. Shortly thereafter, Jeffrey returns to the Convergence so that Ross can have himself frozen…
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…o provide. Again, religion was at the heart of Berger’s thinking about the world, including the global world of our 21st century era. In the lead essay for a book on Religion in Global Civil Society that I edited, Berger notes that “whether civil or uncivil, there can be no doubt that religion today is being globalized to an unprecedented degree” (p15). Trying to make sense of this new reality, like the many social realities that fascinated him ov…
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…tively seek to redress it. And that is where the gap between the so-called New Atheism and radical or culturally relevant humanism lies. Is there anything you had to leave out? More discussion about abortion and reproductive justice vis-à-vis all of the draconian legislation that’s come down from states like Kansas, North Dakota, Texas and Mississippi. The fact that abortion and birth control policies continue to be hijacked by the extreme right…
Read More…eptable to have a Muslim president. In the end, we may see the decline of the Carson candidacy without any of this being discussed. (That, indeed, would be a relief.) Trump had his moment; Carly Fiorina had a far shorter moment; now it’s Carson’s moment. But even if he, rather than, say, Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, were to win Iowa, there’s little precedent for caucus winners moving on to anything bigger and better. Remember Mike Huckabee and Rick Sa…
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…th and between the words on the page. The “book of nature,” as the natural world is sometimes called, is no different. Beauty in nature begins at the surfaces but compounds rapidly beneath. All scientists know this. Keeping this beauty and wonder and mystery from those who come to church in search of God is simply unfair. By keeping the best of modern science out of the church, a disservice is done not only to those who come looking for God, but t…
Read More…ell as the appeal to “remove the veil from their hearts.” According to the New York Times, the new prayer may be translated as follows: “Let us pray for the Jews. May the Lord Our God enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men.” The prayer also expresses hope that “all Israel may be saved.” What many may not realize is that both the old and the new Good Friday prayers are citing the apostle Paul. The re…
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