Religion Dispatches
…d part of the the world are aware of this selective reporting from Israel; Americans less so. This widespread American ignorance of the variety of political opinion within Israel is the result of a sustained decades-long campaign on the part of organizations represented in the Conference, a campaign which reflects the acute unease that dissident Israeli opinion generates in the United States. One of the prime ‘offenders’ in the eyes of the self-ap…
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…y of them evangelical Christians who identify as white—to the old story of American exceptionalism and American Innocence. To be clear, I think that this war can be won, but it can only be won if we don’t make the mistake of misjudging the enemy. It can be won if Black people continue to be the field commanders, as their righteous witness can’t be dismissed and ridiculed by the Raging Right without exposing the racist core of the Right’s project….
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…uglas’ theory to its conclusion, all civic space becomes part of the white American sacred. American civil religion, seen this way, is predicated on the protection of the white body, property ownership, veneration of founding patriarchs and flag worship. It is a religion that values national sovereignty above all else, and consumes non-white bodies that, like Thind’s, “retain indefinitely clear evidence of their ancestry.” All who do not worship t…
Read More…make a “Passover offering.” Seven is a biblically significant number, the number of completion and perfection, and in this spring of 2007 the Praise-a-thon began on Easter Sunday, the seventh day of Passover. If you make the Passover offering, Munsey claims, God will give you seven blessings: God will dispatch an angel to lead miracles; rid you of your enemies; bless you with prosperity; heal you; give you longevity; give you an inheritance you k…
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…oppression has now taken over” the country, and “hundreds of thousands of ‘American sympathizers’ have been labeled traitors, imprisoned, tortured, and killed.” At home, Obama directed U.S. intelligence services “to cease all wiretapping of alleged terrorist phone calls unless they first obtained a specific court warrant for each case.” Captured overseas terrorists are no longer given military tribunals but are “now given full trials in the U.S. c…
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…ere not companionship-based. They were economic arrangements. Okay, that’s number 1. Number 2, let’s say that your wife didn’t provide you with a male offspring. A man could take another wife and another wife and another wife until one of them did. This is the “sanctity of marriage” that is being protected. Are you kidding me? Wow. Okay, so that’s Old Testament. Then along comes Jesus. Well for those of us who follow Jesus, I always like to point…
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…ings from Arab and Muslim governments with the countries’ legal regimes, a number of which punish homosexuality with death. A hacker identifying with Anonymous flooded some ISIS-related Twitter accounts with rainbow flags, gay porn, and fake “coming out” tweets. Mexico: Church driving down support for marriage equality; activists worry about threats In the weeks since President Enrique Peña Nieto announced plans to push for a constitutional change…
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…was caught flat-footed, and hard pressed to understand how the majority of Americans in the 20th century could just ignore the clear-cut evidence, and wrap themselves tighter in the mythology. There is something right about these words. “Accommodation” is a civilized approach, at least when compared to “confrontation.” And I too, along with many other Christians, am hard pressed to understand how so many Americans can simply ignore the evidence fo…
Read More…any other name) a Reconstructionist? And as Gerson noted in his essay, the number of people who can be labeled in this way would “fit in a phone booth.” (Actually there are significantly more than he recognizes, but I take his point.) My point, though, is that this is the wrong question. Far more interesting, I think, is to look at the influence of Christian Reconstruction; how has it impacted the style of the conservative Christianity that makes…
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…lifestyles such as lesbian gay bisexual transgender (LGBT).” Thailand: Gay American-Spanish Couple Fighting Surrogate for Custody of Child An American man and his Spanish partner had their day in court this week in a long-running custody dispute between them and the Thai woman who acted as a surrogate, but “who decided she wanted to keep the child when she found out they were gay,” according to AP. According to the story, the woman who carried the…
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