Religion Dispatches
…in mind. I can name the people who were my imagined audience. I have their numbers in my cell phone. There are, of course, lots of other people I would invite to eavesdrop on this solipsistic soliloquy. I’d like Bataille scholars to read the book. I’d like people who’ve never heard of Bataille to read the book. I’d like feminist and queer theologians—and those scholars who study queer theory—to read it. And if a serious scholar of Bacon’s or Mappl…
Read More…moderate Baptist Center for Ethics, contributing editor Brian Kaylor last month broke what was probably the most under-noticed religion story of the campaign season. He reported that a group of about 80 pastors and other conservative Christian leaders met in Texas, under the direction of televangelist James Robison, to continue to plot what Kaylor describes as a “behind-the-scenes strategy” to defeat Barack Obama in 2012. In the second part of hi…
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…ns in Africa…. The plea to “help gays escape” homosexuality is perhaps the most commonly repeated mantra across the African continent. From vicious anti-LGBTQ figures such as Martin Ssempa of Uganda, to ostensibly more respectable evangelical leaders such as Rev. Pukuta Mwanza(Executive Director of the Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia), religious leaders endorse prayers and counseling as an answer to homosexuality. Despite the Archbishop of Canter…
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…ose “generally not okay,” which was slightly higher than those who condemn mobile use in movie theaters. This finding indicates not only that the secular chambers of the cinema still don’t command quite the respect of Good Old Fashioned Faith—but also that the Pew methodology may be a bit out of whack. I make that latter point based on my recent experiences in church—which are myriad, because while I may be a Jew, I am also a religion reporter. If…
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…when paired with in-depth qualitative research. These kinds of studies are more expensive, and more limited in their aims. Wuthnow is right when he suggests, following a report from the American Academy of Political and Social Science, that “money for polls about religion would be better spent on a fewer high-quality polls than on more frequent low-quality polls.” The results won’t be flashier. But the first goal of research, and the goal of journ…
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…der remarks, “Turns out that if you’re snoozing on your mattress on Sunday morning, you’re actually more likely to see science and religion in conflict than the pious folks sitting in the pews.” Reuters focused in on this result too, but no one asked the critical question: what if the more religious you are, the more likely you are to assume that true science agrees with your faith, and that all other science (evolutionary biology, climatology) is…
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…egun publicly to address. It is a massive human rights injustice because homophobia is endemic in Africa; most countries there, including the three he visited, have laws against homosexuality. In Uganda a measure signed into law last year by its president compelled citizens to report suspected homosexual activity to the police. Increased levels of violence against the gay community ensued. For Francis such attitudes are an additional problem insid…
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…-radical arc because over the course of all of my interviews, this was the most common trajectory most of progressive evangelicals had followed. I thought it was important to show this in intimate detail because it helps answer important questions. What are the greatest obstacles in disentangling from the Religious Right? How do people change? What are the consequences of change? What are the rewards? Why is inclusivity so difficult and how are pe…
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…e walls tumbling down? When the Freedom From Religion Foundation puts your phone call on hold, you don’t hear muzak. Instead, the phone system plays a homegrown jingle featuring lines like “Everyone is tired of your piety / get off your knees and get to work” and “We’ve got to fight the battle of church and state / or the walls come tumbling down.” The receptionist told me that FFRF co-president Dan Barker, a former evangelical preacher and occasi…
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…willingness to partner with religious organizations to work toward the common good, as the pluralism inherent in democracy demands. With respect to the terminology of “coming out,” one of the qualitative responses included in Reality Check, identified as coming from a female respondent in Kentucky, reads in part, “Joining an atheist/humanist meetup group helped me have the courage to ‘come out’ with my secular beliefs. Prior to having a social gr…
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