Religion Dispatches
…’s values are not Chicago values. They’re not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members. And if you’re gonna be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect Chicago values.” (emphasis mine)…
Read More…a 30-year-old conservative radio and television commentator with more microphone than sense. As part of a four-segment series on Mormonism, Ferguson developed a rambling, virtually content-free six-minute segment featuring man-on-the street interviews with local Memphis residents about, well, how very “fruity” Mormonism is. (There are 45,000 Mormons in Tennessee, about .7% of the population. Mormons left the state en masse in the 1880s due to anti…
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Adam Clayton Powell called it “cheap grace,” but we might call it “cheap atonement”: the effort by sinners to select which sins to acknowledge and repent. Pope Benedict XVI ended his heavily protested visit to England with a heartfelt apology for German bombings of England during the Battle of Britain; though he refused to accept Christian responsibility for the Holocaust, blaming it instead on pagans and atheists. Given that Cardinal Walter Kasp…
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…er recounts the story of working class Christianity in turn-of-the-century Chicago, with some insights for the prospect of a progressive resurgence here and now. Your book focuses on Chicago in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when social Christianity was championed by working people rather than established clergy. In fact, the two groups were often at odds. That’s exactly right. While many think of the Social Gospel as a creation of the…
Read More…raising children, a child development expert, and a representative of the Illinois Bar Association. In a discussion of research on parenting and child development, Dr. Laura Berk of Illinois State University characterized the notorious Regnerus study as methodologically flawed and arriving at invalid conclusions. Kicking off the testimony in opposition to the bill was Jennifer Robeck Morse of the Ruth Institute, a project of the National Organiza…
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…Nation of Islam’s “Angels of Death,” and eventually plotted to bomb select Chicago buildings and shoot down airplanes over the Chicago skies—though no resume should neglect the routine work of murder, extortion, and theft. Moorish Science? The authors of this book argue that the story of the Black P Stone Nation matters not merely because the Stones are an innovative criminal organization, not merely because the terrorism case against Fort stands…
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…llennium, his new book about the agricultural mission of the University of Illinois, land-grant universities like Illinois were founded in a millennial attitude toward the purpose of agricultural laborers in the developing nation, long before the advent of secularism distinguished Christian from basic rational thought. However, land-grant universities, unlike colleges founded by scores of other Christian denominations, never had a very explicit re…
Read More…le are working together to digitize the Dead Sea Scrolls and make them available to the public. Finally, did the Berenstain Bears become practicing Christians? *This post has been corrected. The church is located in Memphis, Michigan, not Memphis, Tennessee. The First Baptist Church of Memphis (Tennessee), by all appearances, promotes a positive engagement with community, like interfaith dialogue. RD regrets the error….
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…way from the hard work of repentance, who tickle our ears with promises of cheap grace, and offer a vision of the cross of Jesus that has nothing to say to the crosses, and lynching trees, of history. But, if we do, we will be settling for the gospel of Caesar, not the good news of Jesus Christ. Perhaps it is time to put down the chalk, stop drawing pyrotechnical conspiracy theories that play into our worst fears and listen, instead, for the diffi…
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…inly cross over into antisemitism. But let us read Rosen carefully. Tzedek Chicago “opposes the very concept of an exclusively Jewish nation-state in historic Palestine.” Not against a “Jewish nation-state” but “an exclusively Jewish nation-state.” This isn’t a claim against the land of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. In that regard “Jewish” could be attached to the nation-state that exists there. Just not exclusively, because it’s al…
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