Religion Dispatches
…a vocal right-wing fringe movement (like Farage’s UKIP) that has limited access to political power than to have a quieter right-wing fringe movement that, by taking over a mainstream party, actually has a shot at national office. I suspect Clinton and her campaign made a good bet. Better to face things head on than to pretend they don’t exist, especially when so much is on the line. But the issue remains thorny. Faced with new, muscular expressio…
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…s, lemons, limes, and cotton, Muslims also introduced… pasta. Yeah, pasta. Bet you didn’t see that one coming. Given the connection between pasta, pizza and sex, that’s a major You’re Welcome. I mean, can you imagine Italian food without pasta? Can you imagine America without Italian food? Yes, Lindsey Graham, unfortunately it’s true. Even Al Capone was our fault. Or Al-Capone, at least, who may or may not have been the same person. We lost track…
Read More…nt of the total number of the members mentioned in articles V and VIII. Despite this, Douthat assures us that “as a Catholic,” he expects “the plot to ultimately fail; where the pope and the historic faith seem to be in tension, my bet is on the faith.” It’s a measure of how deeply conservative Catholics identify the “faith” with the doctrinal orthodoxy of JP II and Benedict that Douthat actually believes he speaks for Catholics more authentically…
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…changes such radical discoveries might manifest in religion? I’m going to bet that religion is not going to disappear. If anything, the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence might look a bit like the sixteenth century, when Europeans first began to grapple with the fact that the western hemisphere contained two massive continents with millions of inhabitants. But, as to specifics: how could Christians maintain the special election of humanit…
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…ghboring cities because of overregulation. We see the liberal agenda being promoted under the mantra of ‘Keep Fayetteville Funky,’ but it has never encroached on us personally…. In August, all that changed.” Meanwhile, another Fayetteville pastor, Duncan Campbell describes their side’s effort as a virtuous takeover from the outside. “It was light invading the darkness,” he explains, “and the center of the dark cloud was at the very gates of our ci…
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…r rationales to sustain enrollment. The school found a winning strategy in promoting family values. LCA portrayed its mission as supporting Christian families and promised to shape young men and women who knew their place. A 1975 promotional brochure for the school advertised, “we have no hippies” and “you can tell our boys from our girls without a medical examination.” The relative lack of explicit racial rhetoric in the family values movement wo…
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…world of prosperity gospel preachers, whose claims about the relationship between faith, donations to the church, and personal well-being strike many outsiders as a straightforward, money-motivated swindle. In the business of hope, there’s already very little overlap between the legal and the ethical—and, it seems, little clarity on where the legal marketing ends and the illegal stuff begins. What’s clear is that dreams are good business. It’s fi…
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…’ and ‘To Be Alone with You’, Sufjan does well to collapse the distinction between divine- and human-directed affections—his ‘You’ could apply to God and loved one alike.” The former song’s title is a direct pull from the Book of Isaiah which reads in full, “For you will go out with joy/And be led forth with peace; The mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you/And all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” The…
Read More…the country and have decided to remain, or return after a few years away. Between the two groups, the self-understanding of the community becomes defined over and against urban life, for good reasons (wanting a small, caring community) and bad (wanting not to live next to black people). All of this can be dealt with, but change comes slow in rural areas. Think generations, rather than years, much less the lightning pace expected by the wired worl…
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…gelicals sometimes claim they “hate religion, but love Jesus,” but you can bet the RFI wouldn’t therefore claim that evangelicals have no religious rights. Slide from a presentation used by the author in religious studies classes. So why isn’t The Satanic Temple a religion? The RFI doesn’t say. It’s implied they’re not a religion because they don’t believe in God. But in United States v. Seeger (1965), the Supreme Court ruled that belief in a Supr…
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