Religion Dispatches
…holarship done this summer. Meanwhile, I try to hold it together to write a 800-word piece without crying and wanting to tear my hair out about the pain of my people. I’m not writing prophetic words to you anymore. You fix this shit. I’m done carrying the cross of America, its false promises of democracy and inclusion, the documents that excluded me and called my ancestors three-fifths of a person. You figure it out. I’m about comforting Black peo…
Read More…nizations to be opaque about their money. And besides, there are plenty of ways to steal from nonprofits even when they do file 990s. The interesting thing about all three cases is that they reveal the compulsion to sort out the messy business of religion in America once and for all. But the wall of separation between church and state is neither entirely solid nor porous. The better metaphor might be No Exit with a pastor and an atheist damned to…
Read MoreLate last month, Pope Francis met with charismatic Christian and Pentecostal leaders at the Vatican, including prosperity gospel televangelist Kenneth Copeland, a popular American religious figure whose theology and lifestyle is directly at odds with the Pope’s. The meeting was not the humble Pope’s first encounter with the self-anointed bishops of bling. In February, he recorded a video message for a Copeland conference, in which he called for u…
Read More
…ics-as-entertainment culture, and the extraordinary fulfillment of all the ways that faith, apocalypticism, and the politics of fear can combine to help someone raise cash. Bakker has always had a nose for spectacle. In 1977, he started the PTL Satellite Network, making him one of the first religious leaders to recognize the potential of satellite TV. Then, using his fame and profits from the network, he started Heritage USA. Built on more than 2,…
Read More
…she mobilized anthropology to survive prison. This past week, and in some ways since 2001, I find myself staring at a blank screen, trying to write a response to the representation, specifically the misrepresentation of Muslims, in American news media. Hoodfar’s statement that it wasn’t the fieldwork she chose, and yet she had to write about it, really resonates with me. How do I as an anthropologist who works with Muslim youth in Pakistan and th…
Read More
…orts,” is indeed “long-discredited.” But then they offer what amounts to an 800-word platform to the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg. The short piece serves as a teaser for Friday’s episode of 20/20, the result of a year-long investigation into several ex-gay “camps” located in the American South. The 20/20 segment features interviews with at least two young people sent to the camps—as well as self-described pastors and administrators of th…
Read More
…es beyond their competency, they could put themselves and others in harm’s way, creating a micro-disaster within a disaster. While many Twitter commenters pointed toward Lakewood Church’s large sanctuary as a shelter, one could easily imagine a Superdome-like scenario with masses of people needing even greater assistance. On Monday, a VOAD liaison in Texas told us that Lakewood was on high ground, but largely cut off from required points of access…
Read More…hose who are seeking the patronage of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Norway: Anti-Equality Forces Gaining Strength in Norwegian Church, Both Sides Organizing A commentary by Hanne Skartveit published in Norway last week suggests that changes in the church, and the appointment of new bishops who oppose allowing gays to marry in the church, have shifted the college of bishops away from majority support for marriage. She says opponents of gay marr…
Read More…s, Jerusalem, and Louisiana. But I do find it fascinating, in a depressing way, that a 13th century mosque has been willfully demolished, and a 16th century mosque forcibly converted into a Communist propaganda center, but that you wouldn’t know a thing about either unless you actively follow the issues facing minority religions. The Koriya Mosque in Western China reportedly dates from 1237. Last week the Guardian published satellite images of the…
Read More
…eep state and church separate precisely because religion is divisive. It always has been and it always will be, no matter how good one’s religious intentions are. Rep. Cleaver intended to be inclusive with this prayer, but he did just what his name suggests, just what the Founders feared, and just what our Constitution is meant to prevent—he divided the country along religious lines. Prayer at legislative sessions, which could easily be done by th…
Read More