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Prosperity Gospel Is Not the Only Problem with Joel Osteen’s Harvey Response

By Brie Loskota and Peter Gudaitis

Twitter was outraged Monday. Megachurch Pastor Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church, housed in a former basketball arena, looked to be dry and quiet, even as thousands of Houstonians were seeking shelter from Hurricane Harvey. “Joel Osteen” started to trend on Twitter with comments about the hypocrisy of the prominent Prosperity Gospel preacher, who tweeted out that he and his wife were praying for Houston, while appearing not to do anything to address…

Play to Extinction: Religious Groups Unite Against Predatory Gambling

By Frederick Clarkson

…s were legal in two states in 1985 (Nevada and New Jersey). Today there are 800,000 machines in 40 states. The new generation of electronic “slots” do not even use coins. You purchase and swipe an electronic card like you do at the ATM. The addictive nature of the electronic slots and their role as the main revenue stream of the gambling industry is not widely understood. Industry data show that 70-80% of the revenue of casinos come from these mac…

The Intellectual Source Code For National Conservatism Can Be Found at This Niche Catholic Publication

By Peter Schwartz

…e, as it were) is Catholic natural law moral philosophy. Natural law is the 800-year-old Thomist tradition that absorbs (from revelation and scripture) and communicates (into public discourse and legal practice) a quite specific understanding of the human individual as the summit of God’s creation. First Things has hosted some of the most important debates and produced some of the most fruitful arguments in support of National Conservatism, the in…

The Feds: Gamblers And Addicts

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ss federal mandates. The Centers for Disease Control, for instance, have a number of relatively small field stations, research facilities coordinating work on malaria and other blood-borne diseases. In the absence of a coherent alternative, they were ordered to become AIDS research labs as well. A great deal of the initial outlays went into converting relatively small field stations into much larger research laboratories called upon to expand thei…

Did the Pope Embrace the Prosperity Gospel?

By Sarah Posner

Late 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…

Normalization is Control: Telling Stories to Survive

By Mariam Durrani

…for myself, my family, and colleagues. So I’ve been trying to draft a short 800-word article for Religion Dispatches, as my attempt to make sense of this current moment, not because I chose this as an anthropological project, but here I am. Here I am listening to Trump’s transition team drop words like Muslim registry or that there is a precedent for internment camps in American history. The news that the KKK has been dropping their newsletter off…

Gay Marriage to End “Culture Wars”?

By Bill Berkowitz

…n staunchly opposed to allowing gays and lesbians to marry, and increasing numbers of Republicans and white evangelicals say that gay marriage will be very important in their voting decisions.” A Pew Research Center survey conducted after the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage found that 49% of Americans said they oppose allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry, while 38% favored gay marriages. In July 2004, 56% opposed…

My God, David Brooks

By John Modern

…t is almost invisible outside the academic world because the text is nearly 800 pages of dense, jargon-filled prose.” Rest assured, we do not need to read Taylor for ourselves because David Brooks can be trusted. His ongoing effort to distill for us the density of jargon is a choice well-honed. The result: a column that we have chosen to read (again, wisely) and, moreover, a readerly choice that becomes a sign to others and ourselves that we are a…

Religious Right Targets Obama Picks, Daschle and Holder

By Bill Berkowitz

…that legalized abortion.” He “voted for federal funding of abortions on a number of occasions,” including 2003, when “he voted for an amendment that would repeal President Reagan’s ‘Mexico City Policy’ and allow funding for abortions—and abortion counseling—abroad.” In 1999, “he voted to kill an amendment that would prohibit taxpayer dollars to fund abortions covered by federal health insurance plans… [and] in 1997, [he] voted for an amendment th…

Conservative Christians Oppose New ‘Inter-Religious’ University

By Philip Clayton

Claremont School of Theology caught national attention on June 9 with the announcement of a new inter-religious university. Beginning in the fall, students at this Methodist seminary will study side by side with students from the Academy of Jewish Religion in Los Angeles and the Islamic Center of Southern California. The San Diego Jewish Journal calls it “the world’s first multi-religious graduate school.” Of course, Claremont is not alone. Hartf…