Religion Dispatches
…ious freedom” agenda? A priest blogging under the name of Father Z has a similar theory and he’s literally seeing red. You can practically feel the spittle flying off the page in his jeremiad against NCAN, Haffner and yours truly, whom he seems to think is a nun, which is very, very funny. He calls NCAN a “tiny, liberal loon crank group” and says they’re a front for some unnamed larger lefty group and also unnamed “dangerous initiatives.” The idea…
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…disaffected post-working class isolationism combined with Reagan-era economics. Those characterizations might be partly true but they fail to capture some of the more lasting features of this America, an America whose several discreditings and multiform rage has left all watching scrambling to find an account of things that would make sense of institutional racism, gunplay, Islamophobia, Bernie Bros, email scandals, and whatever is coming next. B…
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…d scientists, but of phenomena that confirm the reality of the sacred—what Mircea Eliade called hierophanies. At the heart of “Miracles” is not a fundamentalist rejection of science but a rejection of disenchantment—of a societal pressure to accept a rational-scientific worldview even when it fills our world with less meaning instead of more. It is ultimately not surprising that horrorcore shock artists, who have apparently rejected every other so…
Read More…h the press, claiming that he did try to stab a friend (or relative) and confirming doubts about his claimed interactions with a high-ranking military officer and the nation’s most prestigious military academy. That would undermine any presidential candidate’s standing, but especially the standing of one who has nothing to go on but his autobiography….
Read More…k Jarretta Hamilton, a fourth grade teacher at Florida Christian School, who was fired after she got pregnant nearly a month before marrying her fiancé. Or, ask Bruce K. Waltke, an Old Testament professor at Reformed Theological Seminary, based in Jackson, Mississippi, who was fired after saying Christians can believe in evolution. The religious right can’t have it both ways—expelling and firing people they disagree with while suing other schools…
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…inued for the remainder of the century, buoyed by expectations about the coming millennium. Dedicated lay organizations have formed around the most prominent sightings and hundreds of websites are devoted to interpreting Marian prophecies. Generally, the Church is dubious of such claims. Only a handful of apparitions have met the Church’s standards for approval and even this has been conditional. Major sightings in places like Lourdes and Fatima h…
Read More…gnificant number of Republicans are considering abandoning their party’s nominee. This is a grave mistake, Schlafly says—because a Donald Trump “radical redirection” could actually set America back on the path of Reagan’s conservative revolution. In The Conservative Case for Trump, Schlafly and her coauthors Ed Martin and Brett M. Decker set aside the circus of the campaign and zero in on ten defining points of the Trump agenda to convince Republi…
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…Even when he is not vehemently repudiated, I believe that Cone is largely misunderstood. One misunderstanding of Cone takes the form of an endorsement. I’ve often heard Cone and other liberationists’ work reduced to the axiom, “all theology is contextual.” The main thing about Cone is that he contextualizes Christianity to his black experience, this interpretation goes. While perhaps not untrue, this reductionistic interpretation loses sight of t…
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…the fight to get there was full of trauma, was replicating oppressive dynamics, abusive dynamics, then what is the point?” Organizations such as DPN and Generative Somatics have held events focused specifically on healing and spiritual well-being, from opportunities to access healing services, to intensive workshops. Cullors herself ends events with a “prayer” she recites from Assata Shakur’s Letter to the Movement: “It is our duty to fight for f…
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…s Lindsay hurdles toward her senior year—and a summer consumed by an “academic summit” at the University of Michigan—her teacher does just that. In truth, Jeff Rosso, her guidance counselor, had been there all along, paying attention and flashing the peace sign with his long, aging hippie hair and Hush Puppies. It just took the right words at the right time for Lindsay to notice. “Maybe you’re tired and broken?” Rosso asks Lindsay as she slouches…
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