Religion Dispatches
…ever he dies. He’s met his demise ten times now, each time emerging with a new face and new personality. The first three episodes of the current season use that regeneration as the jumping-off point for a sort of trilogy exploring the show’s interlocking themes of identity, morality, and integrity. As years pass and more actors step into the role, it becomes increasingly important for each performer to distinguish their version of the Doctor from…
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…at applies Christian principles of democracy), the political vision of the new Islamism melds the broad cultural identity of being a Muslim with constitutional and democratic governing systems. While this may seem like a new and counterintuitive phenomenon to some, it’s actually a trend that goes back at least to the 1980s, but which really took shape in the 1990s when a new, political form of Islam garnered a majority in the Turkish parliament an…
Read More…oncern about LGBT Equality in a Post-Mandela Nation Joe Morgan of Gay Star News reported on New Year’s Day that some South African activists are concerned that the legacy of Nelson Mandela, which included the groundbreaking inclusion of sexual orientation in the Constitution, could be at risk in his absence. President Jacob Zuma, as well as several other representatives in South Africa, have made homophobic comments in the past. ‘When I was growin…
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…ontend, are not granted by either document, only recognized in them; these rights exist only because they were granted by God. That “endowed by the Creator” argument has been made repeatedly by Republican politicians in speeches lately, including Mike Huckabee, Michele Bachmann, and Newt Gingrich. That’s the new “values voters” rhetoric: government is a tyrant, disobedient to God. Sure, all the anti-gay, anti-abortion, and anti-secularism stuff i…
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…nel, “videos to make your noggin get bigger,” contains several videos that promote 9/11 trutherism and COVID-19 conspiracy theories. There is a video that features Richard Gage, the founder of the conspiracy group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, speculating about the financial benefactors from the Twin Towers’ collapse. The theme of an evil new world order run by craven elites is extended in the next verse: I wish politicians would look o…
Read More…aplaincy for service members with non-religious beliefs and practices. The new faith code is significant in a number of ways. First, for Bradley and Humanist service members, it means that their existential disposition and associated practices are designated in their military records with language not shaped primarily in opposition to traditional religious designations. “‘Atheist’ says only what I’m not,” Bradley explained. “‘Humanist is what I am…
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…ugh Rio de Paz, a human right group led by a local pastor. By that time I knew something about prison culture, and I also knew there would likely be a prison church leader. What was the culture of the prison? At night, there was one guard for 800 prisoners. In the Rio prison system there’s no real government presence; state control in the prisons is just a façade. The prison gangs are the most powerful presence, but the church exerts a strong infl…
Read More…ife Group members to become mentors themselves, and finally disciple other new converts. Religion scholar Alan Wolfe at The New Republic‘s Plank blog imagined Palin’s religion a libertarian-infused Western evangelicalism: toting guns, having taken drugs once, naming two children after witches, vetoing a ban on domestic benefits to gay couples. These were things Wolfe imagined could complicate her reputation with more straight-laced Southern Baptis…
Read More…e’s just as strong a movement toward cities, as hipster evangelicals plant new churches in New York, Chicago, and L.A. with names like The Journey, The Awakening, and Revolution. But Palin is not a hipster evangelical. She is, as she tells us over and over, a small town girl. And she grew up in a small town church, one with a fondness for spiritual war and a wariness of cosmopolitanism. “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sin…
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…ry becomes even murkier. Take Trijicon, for example, chosen from a Deseret News listicle, “20 companies with religious roots.” Deseret News included Trijicon in the list because the company “inscribed coded biblical references on high-powered rifle sights used by the U.S. military.” That’s it. Other than the founder’s purported religious beliefs, its inclusion is arbitrary. Why not include Ebay, whose founder Pierre Omidyar is a Buddhist, or any o…
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