Religion Dispatches
…addressed, I wouldn’t find it so disturbing. Were Detroit’s finest giving tickets to Speedo-clad gentlemen terrorizing Americas beaches and public pools, I think they’d have a case. I think it’s safe to say that for most people what is ultimately repugnant about the aforementioned policies in some Islamic societies today is not their religious inspiration, but their ultimately tyrranical nature, the imposition of the opinions of one segment of so…
Read More
…nto a Christian nationalist state, a lone star theocracy.” He told RD that Americans United believes strongly in taking the fight to red states that some might be tempted to write off as hopeless. Ever sharp with the facts at his fingertips, Seidel also noted that over 5 million Texans voted for Biden in 2020, insisting that there are no truly red or blue states, and that marginalized folks in GOP-controlled states deserve outside support. Though…
Read More
…he Untouchables), which came out almost a year ago and sold twenty million tickets in France (and nearly as many abroad). Intouchables is a funny and moving comedy, but as politically correct a story as you’ll find: a black young man bordering on delinquency is hired by a tetraplegic wealthy man to be his assistant-nurse-chauffeur. They have a ball together doing crazy—and sometimes nasty—things, and save each other from an apparently inexorable f…
Read More…ow: These lectures are the most theologically complete assessment of early American history available, R.J. Rushdoony reveals a foundation of American History of philosophical and theological substance. This series extends through 1865, the year that marked the beginning of the secular attempts to rewrite history. There can be no understanding of American History without an understanding of the ideas which undergirded its founding and growth. In “…
Read More
…n our side. Number 1 could be “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Number 2: “God doesn’t discriminate.” Number 3: “Sex is only for procreation.” And so on. We could get clever, of course, and assign separate groups of numbers to arguments pro and con or to thematic clusters. I can even imagine some seminary librarian proposing a sort of Dewey Decimal System to organize the arguments. This would allow long series of arguments to be cited b…
Read More
…porters. Rock for Life’s willingness to operate within the institutions of American culture is in line with American Catholic attempts to create space for their voice within the liberal democratic system. In 1999, Kemper initiated a bold plan to counter a pro-choice petition drive sponsored by Rock for Choice. Rock for Choice gathered some 50,000 signatures in support of abortion rights on petitions which were then delivered to Congress and the Wh…
Read More
…. And so, purity and prosperity are conjoined to produce a special kind of American exceptionalism—one that’s maintained in the sphere of the American evangelical family, and which, unavoidably, intersects with the political. This is where we see and hear the Christian Right. This American exceptionalism is then inseparable from national identity. The language of American evangelical exceptionalism demonstrates how evangelicals have “successfully…
Read More
…e “big three” advocacy organizations—the Freedom from Religion Foundation, American Atheists, and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State—and commented on the increasing diversification of the secular movement, as a result of which “the movement has seen a more intersectional approach.” To be sure, movement atheism has long been dominated by cisgender white men, and much work remains to be done both in terms of diversifying leaders…
Read More…ly between religion and neuroscience, but also, more specifically, between American religious history and American neuroscience. By way of proposition and broad outline, I want to suggest three conversational pivots for that kind of discussion: 1) The first is the historical interchange between religion and technology. It is useful, I think, to step aside for a moment from the religion-science nexus and to foreground the religion-technology relati…
Read More
…ing you had to leave out? Of course! As it is, the book has chapters about American Jewish philosophy, religious conversion, the American west, Jewish identification with “Indians,” agricultural schools, Zionism, crime in New York, the Leo Frank case, and the Leopold and Loeb hearing. It would have been great to write chapters about sports, or about World War I, or about philanthropy, or about film. Or about ten or twelve more things I can think o…
Read More