Religion Dispatches
…bait and target gays and liberals and (as Sanders remembered from her own experience) to shut down student anti-war protests. Clerical leaders serving BYU student congregations have been expected to report content from private confession and counseling interactions to University authorities, impacting the ability for young people who want to resolve past transgressions (even ones committed before arrival at BYU) to do so without feeling that their…
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…to looser forms of governance are fraught with high political risk, as in ex-Yugoslavia, Egypt, and Iraq. Moreover, most of these radical groups, including the “Islamic State,” have a record of cynical gangsterism, routinely taking hostages and terrorizing targets for ransom. Many of their recruits are ex-cons and social dropouts. In the diasporas of Europe and North America, the seeming romance of radical ideological causes can appeal to those wh…
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…se of cards. The Sunni Arabs in Iraq were once before lured away from the extremism of al Qaeda in Iraq (the precursor of ISIS) when they were empowered by the American-supported Iraqi government. If the government today in Iraq—and in Syria—were to politically embrace the Sunni Arabs in their countries ISIS would began to crumble from within. This is what US Secretary of State John Kerry meant when he said, soon after the Paris attacks, that it w…
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…eeply offensive “s” word which is historically connected to the rape and sexual exploitation of Indian women. During the Vietnam War the US military referred to indigenous-controlled territory as “Indian Country.” Fire bases and military operations were named after Indian leaders or significant events in the longest war in human history, the war against the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. Most famously, the military has long encourag…
Read More…not believing in God. Instead, I have to bet—with my life—on whether God exists or not. If God exists, and I fail to believe in God, I will experience eternal damnation—about the most significant downside imaginable. If I believe in God, and turn out to be right, salvation and eternal bliss are mine. But if my belief turns out to be wrong – God doesn’t exist—what will I have lost? Not much, in comparison to the risks of not believing in a God who…
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…right to don a bow tie next time FedSoc conclave rolls around. This ethics code exists largely as a marketing tool for reporters willing to buy what the FedSoc Six are selling, but also as cover for the justices’ clear preferences. Its language, which allows justices to participate in “a nonprofit civic, charitable, educational, religious, or social organization,” and even raise money on such an organization’s behalf, appears aimed at Clarence Tho…
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…tes that Knights need to understand “how others get close to God.” Credo sixteen extols the virtue of patriotism. Number nineteen advises humility and nobility, while twenty-two announces that no woman should fear a Knight, but, rather, should feel protected by him. Twenty-nine reiterates that every Knight should be “firmly and truthfully in the just cause of God.” Numbers thirty-four through thirty-eight prohibit drugs, kidnapping, and mandate dr…
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…. William Warren wanted to dazzle his readers into supporting North Polar exploration with his 500-page book explaining why the Garden of Eden had once been there. Doubtful, I know. But I feel less impressed than entertained, bemused, and sometimes amazed by the scale of the reasoning that these characters put into these claims—and a little protective too. They had no idea their theories would be made to stand up generations later and testify. Amo…
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…llywood Censored. The code they designed became the Motion Picture Conduct Code, popularly know as the Hays Code after it was adopted by William Hays, a Presbyterian elder who was hired by the major studios to help clean up the industry’s image after it was rocked by a series of scandals. The code, says Black, “was a fascinating combination of Catholic theology, conservative politics and pop psychology—an amalgam that would control the content of…
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…r families and nation reject them as apostates). American Christians were exhorted to extend a helping hand. “Let them rule!” The reconciliation of the sexes was a headliner theme. Back in the ’90s, PK had a kind of ladies’ auxiliary, the “Promise Reapers,” who cheered the men on as they arrived for the stadium rallies. But on Friday night Jane Hansen Hoyt, president of Aglow International (the influential evangelical women’s ministry) became the…
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