Religion Dispatches
…t, I think, is the message of the manna and the quail out in the desert. The newly-freed Israelites would love to be as rich as they remember the Egyptians being, but their God calls them to a “just-enough” economy that prevents exploitation. We’ll see if he can pull the same rabbit out of the hat in Madison. *The Abrahamic faiths, anyway. **Note to those who troll the comments: that’s scripture paraphrase, not quote….
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…ive American Jews and conservative American evangelicals as a Bible story that, by Netanyahu’s reading, depicts Iranians as eternal enemies. And I guess Netanyahu, like any politician, hates to miss an opportunity to reach his base. (In case word of his remarks to Obama didn’t reach them, Netanyahu mentioned Esther in his AIPAC speech last night, calling it the story of a “Persian anti-Semite [who] tried to annihilate the Jewish people.”) The geni…
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…more than a generation (somewhere between 70 and 110 CE). All this to say that figuring out “what the Bible says” on any given topic is difficult and sometimes well-nigh impossible. Taking the Bible seriously means first taking its own history seriously, and then taking what it says seriously enough to admit the density and opacity of some of its pronouncements. “Mystery” is a word that appears with some regularity in many biblical books. In addit…
Read More…testified in her deposition that Ingersoll “came in and we were just chitchatting and he said that he was going to get married. Wanted something really simple, khaki I believe he said. And I just put my hands on his and told him that because of my relationship with Jesus Christ I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t do his wedding.” In other words, Ingersoll didn’t ask Stutzman to “help organize” his wedding, nor did Stutzman tell him she loved him. He a…
Read More…an effect world weather”! Astrology, of course, is a superstitious belief that the movements of stars and planets can affect our daily lives here on Earth, a belief that has no basis in science. Some people—including, apparently, the South Dakota legislature—still take it seriously, although most view astrological forecasts as light entertainment… And we mustn’t ignore “thermological” causes. Do the wise SD legislators realize that thermology is t…
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…ism as these grave threats to the family. He would dismiss domestic abuse—that’s something that appears in later of his books. He would sometimes accuse women of faking it, just to get attention, that sort of thing. Even where he believed abuse was real, he never really thought of it as a good reason for divorce. Everybody had to stay in their marriage. And when he, when he ended up founding Focus on the Family he really gave all of those ideas th…
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…the American civil religion tradition at home may blind us to the pernicious effects of this updated version of religious nationalism abroad. We live in a time when the cultivation of a more global identity and ethic is imperative. That is why I can’t help feeling that while the populist and progressive chords in the Born Again initiative are pitch perfect, the religious nationalism through which they are amplified creates a moral cacophony that s…
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…had similar results. But what about the mainline Protestants? Yeah, about that. For every 100 churches that responded to white-sounding names, only 89 responded to black names. 86 responded to Latina/o names. And an abysmal 72 responded to Asian names. Also, mainliners’ replies to non-white-sounding names tended to be terser and less inviting than our replies to white-sounding names. My people, listen. There is no sense in which this is okay. Ther…
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…voyage around the world? The show itself offered an intriguing answer to that question. What struck one most about the show was the overwhelming weight, even the burden, of time. Special attention was paid to Darwin’s early bouts of seasickness aboard the HMS Beagle, to his later bouts of homesickness, and then to the sudden decision by the captain—after rounding the southern coast of Africa—to return to South America for further longitudinal rea…
Read More…adio show was on illegal immigration. Barton donned his “biblical scholar” hat to inform us that, “its God, not man, who establishes the borders of nations.” Citing Deuteronomy 32:8, he said: When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he’s the one who set up boundaries for the nations. National boundaries are set by God; he is the one who drew up the lines for the nations. If you have open borders you say,…
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