Religion Dispatches
…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…
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…cts? Concert/art performance at The Fremont Abbey via Cocoa Dream (https://www.flickr.com/photos/haoli/) It tends to be churches, I think, because their costs are lower and the buildings are often beautiful. If somebody came to me and said, “Hey, I’ve got this blank warehouse, and we need to activate it with arts organizations and nonprofits, but I need to make ten grand a month,” I’d immediately say, “I’m sorry that’s probably not going to work.”…
Read More…can, 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 unity among Christian faiths, saying that “misunderstandings throughout history” have separated th…
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…tion of New Orleans not decreased by almost 30 percent (a majority African American), there would be no Beasts of the Southern Wild. Also, by coincidence, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil blowout occurred on the first day of shooting the film in April of 2010. As Zeitlin puts it, “The oil spill happening created this sort of strange, life imitates art on set… The whole time you would wake up in the morning and check the oil and it would get closer and…
Read MoreCNN’s Belief Blog has a great rundown of the lavish homes of American archbishops who haven’t gotten the memo from Pope Francis about a “church which is poor and for the poor.” CNN reports that “10 of the 34 active archbishops in the United States live in buildings worth more than $1 million.” The median home value in the U.S. is $174,200. Not surprisingly, that list includes some of the nation’s most outspoken conservative bishops—and allies of…
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…early twentieth century, restriction of priesthood ordination from African-Americans was considered LDS Church policy, and a host of rationale grew up in its defense—some drawn from American folk theology linking racial blackness to the curse of Cain or Ham, and some particular to Mormon contexts. LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball declared the end of the priesthood ban in June 1978, an announcement later canonized as scripture, but he did no…
Read More…t-out-the-vote drive for the general election and beyond. Don Wildmon, the American Family Association founder, bankroller of Rick Perry’s The Response rally, and now-endorser of Gingrich, introduced the list of registrants at The Response to United in Purpose, writing at the time that “research has shown that it takes only 5 million voters to influence the outcome of an election. This is a do-able goal, and Champion the Vote is seeking Champions—…
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…r than dating, which was derided as part of the “divorce culture:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npxjuh6UyT4 Tonight, Anna described her husband to People as “someone who had gone down a wrong path and had humbled himself before God and those whom he had offended.” This week, a recap of their television show on their blog discussed how Jim Bob and Michelle “encourage their kids to take a chaperone along on all their dates so they have someone to…
Read More…is issue with neo-Nazis, and how such a discussion got him banned from the American white supremacist site Stormfront and another “national socialist forum.” He goes on to maintain that because America has “nation-wrecking multiculturalist Jews,” rather than “conservative Jews” it has a “Jewish problem:” In any case; educate yourself and learn the difference. Today’s conservatives and want to-be Nazis are ignorant when they obsess so much over the…
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…new, and Bakker is appealing to a very particular subculture. Still, his long career points to a market for these messages, and his invocations of the 2016 election point to the way that political unease can offer a marketing opportunity. In 2016, Americans clearly feel a lot of confusion, uncertainty, anger, and fear about whatever lies ahead. For someone like Bakker, that could turn out to be great for sales. * * * Also on The Cubit: Why do the…
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