Religion Dispatches
…s’ intervention, while only 32 percent support it. Opponents may try to dismiss the poll, since it was commissioned by the largest organization fighting for LGBT rights, but the numbers [pdf] show that the sample actually skewed right. Of the 800 registered voters polled 38 percent were strong, weak, or independent-leaning Democrats with 41 percent identifying as strong, weak, or independent leaning Republicans. Conservatives outweighed liberals b…
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…orts,” is indeed “long-discredited.” But then they offer what amounts to an 800-word platform to the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg. The short piece serves as a teaser for Friday’s episode of 20/20, the result of a year-long investigation into several ex-gay “camps” located in the American South. The 20/20 segment features interviews with at least two young people sent to the camps—as well as self-described pastors and administrators of th…
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…nts and are inconsistent with SBE-approved standards include the denial or minimization of the Holocaust, and the teaching of Critical Race Theory, meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons. Instruction may not utilize material from the 1619 Project and may not define American history as something oth…
Read More…—body, life, circumstances, the whole deal—better than does the average voter, even a well-meaning voter who doesn’t like to think about pregnancies being terminated. So. In light of that, might I suggest that framing this exhaustively in terms of innocent fetuses and guilty fathers is… maybe not as compassionate as I hope we all try to be? …
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…ncern that if Hillary Clinton is elected the government will shut down his ministry and all other religious activity. In a recent sermon series, “Leviathan Has Come to America,” he warned viewers that Leviathan has become “king of America,” that the government is coming against the Gospel, and that if the wrong person is elected (Clinton), the Constitution will be destroyed by a newly liberal Supreme Court. In a June 2016 episode with Gary Heavin,…
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…pital and the trust of the people they serve, including difficult to reach minority and immigrant populations, especially vulnerable in disasters. They also have an exhaustive variety of human, material, and spatial resources—from volunteers to parking lots—that can serve as a staging ground for rescue operations. Perhaps most significantly, people of faith are moved to action by their moral framework and sense of compassion. At the same time, the…
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…come along at once. I hope they will brighten people’s days and make them smile on their way to work.’” So will it be a year of smiles for the faithless—or, perhaps, the faithful? A lot depends on the economy. Religion didn’t fare particularly well during the Great Depression. Despite the seeming need for alternative realities, church attendance didn’t swell in the 1930s. At the end of last year, though, some evangelical churches said attendance w…
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…have been organized around it, but it 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 t…
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…test (+$120 for analysis) is available over the counter from Sorenson Genomics at your local drugstore. And it’s selling like hotcakes. According to the Web site, complete with the iconic 1-800 number and attractive female operator with headset, the IDENTIGENE test is “Fast. Accurate. Confidential.” It’s not the speed, accuracy, nor confidentiality that worry me so much (although plenty of problems lurk therein). It’s more the information itself,…
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…other in these settings, or see beyond their status as Jews and Muslims is misleading and defeats the purpose of such gatherings. They are coming together as Jews and as Muslims, willingly placing themselves in the very referent position I have unwittingly been put into by others in my career. On Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, his team of comic reporters frequently appears onscreen with titles like “Senior Black Correspondent” or “Senior Woman Co…
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