Religion Dispatches
…s, 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 by 38 to 18 percent, and a full 74 percent of those polled identified as religious. Some 40 percent claimed the moniker of “born again,” and 33 percent said they attend…
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…lmost like the relief societies or the priesthood in the church, this is a way of connecting,” Shipps said. The difference is that with blogging, as with all things internet, maintaining order is a challenge, even for Mormons who are historical experts at keeping track of things. “It seems to me that it would be virtually impossible to organize Mormon blogging,” Haglund said. “The nature of the medium overcomes even Mormons’ well-known tendency to…
Read More…ndia, and my own reflective readings.” Shukla explains that “while there always have been and now are a growing number of scholars who are committed to presenting emic understandings of Hinduism, we find each year that the ‘in crowd’ created by Doniger at the AAR has yet to shift in terms of power and influence.” In light of this information, she reprimands the AAR for their support of the work and a failure to encourage academic integrity. As a R…
Read More…s, Jerusalem, and Louisiana. But I do find it fascinating, in a depressing way, that a 13th century mosque has been willfully demolished, and a 16th century mosque forcibly converted into a Communist propaganda center, but that you wouldn’t know a thing about either unless you actively follow the issues facing minority religions. The Koriya Mosque in Western China reportedly dates from 1237. Last week the Guardian published satellite images of the…
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…abwe, just as overlooked and beleaguered… Big companies have always sought cheaper labor, moving from North to South in the United States, looking for the hungriest, the most desperate, the least organized, the most exploitable. Press coverage of conditions in Apple’s factories in China has been anything but glowing. Yet when Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, says he’ll give his personal wealth to charities of his choice (many of them in Silicon Valley), he…
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…behind “He Gets Us” want from the people they reach? There are a couple of ways to get at the answer to that question. Along with considering Bill McKendry’s record mentioned above, one is to take a look at the 990 forms the Signatry has filed with the IRS. 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, which include churches and charities, are tax exempt. But in order to maintain that status, they’re required to make annual financial filings that are matters…
Read More…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…
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…e trajectory of deacon-priest-bishop is relatively recent—only about 700 or 800 years in the long history of the Church. In fact, the earlier understanding is that the deacon would become a bishop! I sometimes wonder if the naysayers are more afraid of women bishops than of women priests. But, in modern times, we have reestablished the tradition of a diaconate lived permanently. All priests are also ordained deacons, and in the most formal of litu…
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…l her; suspicious of her capacity to manage her own life.” When you strip away all the layers of celebrity and money from Spears’s story, you end up with a story about a fight between Jamie, a domineering, evangelical father, and Britney, his independent, bipolar daughter. Control of one’s family is highly valued by evangelical fathers; this goes hand in hand with the patriarchy that’s so prevalent in evangelicalism. Yet so few journalists have ad…
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…see itself as an activist church on this issue. I think Crescent Hill sees itself as Crescent Hill and this is wholly consistent with the DNA of Crescent Hill that’s been in place since at least 1926 when Southern Baptist Seminary moved from Broadway downtown to the hill on which it is currently situated. Crescent Hill was formed in 1908. I feel confident in saying that this is who we are and this is pretty much who we always have been. It doesn’…
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