Religion Dispatches
…details, and it is always difficult for an outside observer to detect the coded messages of an in-group. (Think of the McCain campaign’s disturbing “The One” attack ad, which basically called Obama the Antichrist—but on a frequency that only evangelicals reared on apocalyptic conspiracy theories could pick up.) Chellew-Hodge quotes the following catechism from an evangelical organization: 1. We believe the Bible to be the inspired, infallible, au…
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…ntage of his athletic skill to move to wealthy Europe at age 14, where the best footballers are treated like gods and paid even better. He’s the highest paid player in Italian club football, but but when he was traded from Real Madrid to Barcelona he told the press corps, “I mean to run like a black man so I can live like a white one.” This year the tournament takes place in South Africa. It’s imagined to be that country’s global moment of redempt…
Read More…s in much the same way that the Shirley Sherrod video was. The video is at best innocuous, but Palin, in her Fox News role as mean girl racist cheerleader, is still beating Breitbart’s fake drums of scandal even after his death. Palin’s offensive word salad on Sean Hannity was a Tour de farce in her attempt to turn people away from the HBO movie Game Change which focuses in on the choice of Palin as the vice presidential candidate and the trouble…
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…ience, and then you add to that DNA, which has been called things like the code of codes, the holy grail. We give it this kind of supernatural significance. So, I think it’s a combination of being a society that values data, being a society that equates progress with scientific development, and being a society that thinks that genetics—in part because DNA comes from you, from us, from we—is the ultimate information, the ultimate data. It’s like th…
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…Rev. Stephen Broden, who gave a “benediction” at Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “Code Red” anti-health care rally). Broden claimed that “the social justice movement is built upon or predicated on the idea of liberation theology.” (They are, in fact, two separate religious movements.) “Liberation theology has its origin or source in socialism, communism, and Marxism,” he continued. (Not true; as assistant professor at Harvard Divinity School and RD contr…
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…l’s frustration with people who might use “spiritual but not religious” as code for “I don’t really think about religion at all because it’s boring or difficult or irrelevant to my pursuit of self-interest.” One statistician of religion suggests that America is well on its way to becoming a nation of “310 million people with 310 million religions,” each tailor-made to suit themselves. As someone who has made a career out of the life of the mind, a…
Read More…ed view of the shari’ah “threat,” saying that he opposed a shari’ah “legal code” but stopped short of a full-on endorsement of shari’ah law bans. (That said, Reed does indeed understand his audience, and its fears.) The composition of the Faith and Freedom panel led me to believe he might have been attempting if not a rapprochement, then at least some balance. Ironically enough, the panel followed one on alleged anti-evangelical bigotry, though fe…
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…y requires a toughness of mind and a dogged determination that allow us to bestow goodwill on people without discrimination. Furthermore, by intellectual charity, I also mean a generous attempt to understand and represent the perspectives of our opponents. Too often in public conversations, we listen to the opinions of others just long enough to create a caricature. The philosopher Iris Murdoch suggested that love is the “nonviolent apprehension o…
Read More…organized the conference alongside Hivos International, a Dutch group that promotes LGBT and other human rights issues, and Caribe Afirmativo, a Colombian advocacy organization. The Association of Youth in Movement, which advocates on behalf of LGBT Hondurans and other marginalized groups, also sponsored the gathering alongside the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS and other foundations, non-governmental…
Read More…uko, the heterosexual executive director of the Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum, was part of the case that Sexual Minorities Uganda and the Center for Constitutional Rights have brought against American anti-gay activist Scott Lively, JJuuko sais it could put an end to “evangleicals coming here and importing homophobia,” adding, “You can’t promote hate in other countries. You can’t export hate.” Jjuuko is optimistic about the long-term…
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