Religion Dispatches
…e Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)—had a statement on government surveillance, dating from 2006. [A subsequent correction found one more statement, from the United Methodist Church]. Schultz wasn’t especially surprised. These are new, slippery issues. But he was concerned, understandably, by the propsect of religious groups being unequipped to respond, in any substantive way, to an issue of obvious moral import. I’m not saying that Google should add…
Read More
…reserving the Jewishness of Israel extends to “rescuing” Jewish girls from dating Arab boys. Yad L’Achim was portrayed rather unsympathetically in an investigative report by Israel Channel 1 in 2011, which pleased Messianic Jews there for its treatment of what they consider to be harassment and even persecution by the ultra-Orthodox. Another group, Jewish Israel, which claims missionaries and Messianic Judaism threaten the Jewish identity of Isra…
Read More
…interested especially in establishing the dates that demonstrate the “exquisite accuracy of God’s book,” as he wrote in The Perfect Harmony of the Numbers of the Hebrew Kings. He worked extensively on dating creation and Noah’s flood. In 1970, he published The Biblical Calendar of History, a work he revised and re-published several times. These studies are dense and complicated, and seem mostly impenetrable and pointless to outsides. The fundament…
Read More
…Good Brand? The SBC has considered name changes in years past, apparently dating back (at least) to 2004, when the name change first fell under consideration. Over the last months, a special task force solicited comments on all sides of the issue, and reported their findings to the executive committee Monday evening in Nashville. During these months, important convention leaders weighed in with their recommendations. Perhaps most significantly, t…
Read More…nizing and promoting The Response. His organizations have supported Perry, dating back to 2005 and his leadership of the Texas Restoration Project, which boosted Perry’s reelection race for governor. As the emails Coppins obtained make clear, he’s anti-Mormon. But there’s no evidence that he coordinated with the Perry campaign to put Jeffress front and center at the Values Voters Summit on October 7 as the face of evangelical anti-Mormonism, just…
Read More
…with the Synod. The term refers specifically to hookups, or what we called dating in my youth. Breadcrumbing is a cousin of ghosting. Let’s say someone asks you out. You have a nice dinner and whatever you decide to do afterwards, then you part on good terms until the next time. You had fun and want some more. Your efforts to prompt another get-together are ignored or rebuffed. The other person doesn’t respond immediately. When they do, it’s witho…
Read More…orkers, and it violates this city’s long tradition of religious tolerance, dating back to the early decades of the seventeenth century. When Jonas Michaëlius, the first Dutch minister in New Netherland, convened the first religious gathering in New Amsterdam in 1628, he commented on the religious diversity already evident in the colony. “At the first administration of the Lord’s Supper which was observed, not without great joy and comfort to many,…
Read More
…and, has had a rocky relationship with conservative evangelical Christians dating back to at least the campaign of 2000 when called the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson “agents of intolerance.” Earlier this year, the dust-up over the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee—and McCain’s rejection of that endorsement after it was revealed that Hagee claimed that God sent Hitler in order to push the Jews to go Israel—didn’t help his standing in that…
Read More
…hurch choir, making friends in his dorm, and coming to appreciate no-touch dating, hearing from family comes less as a welcome reminder of his true self than as nagging. Through a mix of personal moxie and unbelievable luck, Roose had quite the semester. For spring break, he joined a busload of Liberty students on a missionary vacation, “witnessing” to their godless peers at Daytona Beach, Florida. He held his own in Bible studies and received cou…
Read More
…er church.) Were you allowed to date? (Only when the girls weren’t already dating Jesus.) This type of interrogation usually happens at a party after everyone’s tossed back a few and the conversation turns more intimate. After all, what is more intimate than asking someone to talk about their breakup with God? Not That Kind of Girl is a coming of age story that centers on the gradual fading of Carlene Bauer’s love affair with the Lord. Though she…
Read More