%EB%B0%B1%EC%84%9D%EC%97%AD%EC%95%88%EB%A7%88%2001%C3%95%E3%82%83%EF%BC%9728%EF%BC%91%E3%82%83%EF%BC%92158%20%20%EA%B0%95%EB%82%A8%EC%A0%9C%EC%9A%B0%EC%8A%A4%EC%95%88%EB%A7%88%20%EA%B0%80%EB%A6%AC%EB%B4%89%EB%8F%99%EC%95%88%EB%A7%88%20%EC%9B%94%EA%B3%84%EC%97%AD%EC%95%88%EB%A7%88%20%ED%95%99%EB%8F%99%EB%93%9C%EB%A6%BC%EC%95%88%EB%A7%88%20%EA%B0%9C%ED%8F%AC%EB%8F%99%EC%95%88%EB%A7%88%20962786 | Search Results | Religion Dispatches

How Herbalife’s Gospel of Health and Wealth Fuels a Billion-Dollar Deception

By Michael Schulson

…rates, and supplements, mostly focused on weight loss and muscle gain. Instead of marketing directly to customers, the company bundles its products and sells them to individual distributors, called Members, who then turn around and sell them to friends, relatives, strangers—whoever they can find. For the past couple years, Herbalife has been trying to convince the Federal Trade Commission that this is multi-level marketing—not a pyramid scheme. Dr…

Is Sam Harris Really a White Supremacist?

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…harges against Islam really are. In the opening pages, Harris invites his readers to imagine a young man who gets on a bus and then uses a homemade bomb to kill himself and twenty innocent people. The man’s parents are proud. They’re confident that their son will go to heaven. With just these facts, Harris asks, why is it so easy to guess that the young man is Muslim? That his reader can so easily guess the right answer, Harris argues, is evidence…

The Catholic-Evangelical (Non-)Coalition

By Patricia Miller

…age.” The real Catholic-Evangelical convergence is between the Republican leadership, the Catholic bishops, right-wing Catholics, and rank-and-file Evangelicals, a coalition that was cemented by Karl Rove with his aggressive outreach to “conservative” Catholics during the Bush administration. But the fact that a big chunk of moderate and progressive Catholics are missing from this coalition continues to be lost on many in the media. It’s as if as…

Virginians may Vote in Elections, But in Counties with Militias Democracy Hangs in the Balance

By Carolyn Gallaher and Priya Dixit

…ontinued talk of the new world order and “deep state,” many militias made peace with federal power in Trump’s hands,[34] even welcoming federal policing against their common enemies. In 2017, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes offered to coordinate security with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in advance of an Alt Right “free speech” rally expected to attract anti-fascist counter-protestors.[35] The Oath Keepers continued to support Tru…

A Life After Death Double-Feature: Eastwood’s Hereafter and Noe’s Enter the Void

By Jay Michaelson

…th Sense or Ghost. Matt Damon’s character, a psychic who can speak to the dead, is deeply troubled by his visions, and doesn’t know any more about heaven and hell than we do. The characters in the film suffer. Yet ultimately, they are redeemed by the warm reassurance that all is well after we die; everything is lovely, and weightless, and good. Enter the Void’s world is far less easy. It tracks, religiously at times, The Tibetan Book of the Dead’s…

The Year of the Abusive Priest

By Anthea Butler

…of those who become “thieves and robbers” of the sheep (cf. Jn 10:1 ff.), lead them astray by their own private teachings, or ensnare them in the toils of sin and death? Dear priests, the summons to conversion and to trust in God’s mercy also applies to us; we too must humbly, sincerely and unceasingly implore the heart of Jesus to preserve us from the terrifying risk of endangering the very people we are obliged to save. These words ring hollow w…

Congressional Inaction Leaves Stem-Cell Research At Risk

By Lauri Lebo

…cell research, but limited federally financed research to 21 cell lines already in existence by 2001. Under the Obama administration, private money was still needed to obtain the embryonic stem cells, but federal money could be used to conduct research on hundreds more stem cell lines, as long as donors of embryos signed consent forms and complied with other rules. While Judge Royce C. Lamberth’s ruling could leave in limbo research for a host of…

Religion at Decade’s End

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…y we think about, and talk about, religion today… as a not-so-new century readies the celebrations for its ten-year-old birthday. Religion is back…again The tempting place to begin is with what has almost become a twenty-first century truism: that in this new century, religion was decidedly “back.” Just one year into this new century, religion of a certain sort literally exploded across the brainscape of a wondering and worried world. The Septemb…

Does War Make Sense? Science and Religion on the Battlefield

By Nathan Schneider

…rchestrate performances more compelling than theater and more sacred than peace, all the while inflicting as much damage as possible. The sum resources of a culture—its science, its religion, its poetry, its prejudice—mobilize in the service of that cause. These are as much the technologies of war as the weapons themselves. At least since Carl von Clausewitz first spoke of the “fog of war” (an inevitable unknowing that reigns over every battlefiel…

Do Not Arrest the Pope: New Atheists’ Call for the Pope’s Arrest Isn’t Likely to Produce Justice

By Eric Reitan

…view here —ed. According to a recent Times Online article (provocatively headlined “Richard Dawkins calls for arrest of Pope Benedict XVI”), Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, both leaders in the “New Atheist” movement, “have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church.” The hope, apparently, is to be in a position to have the Pope arrested dur…