Religion Dispatches
…ir husbands. These organizations all promote literature, lectures, conferences, and other materials intended to promote this perspective, as well as the starkly delineated gender norms and expectations upon which this view is based. I’d be willing to bet the t-shirt will be showing up at homeschool conventions across the country this spring….
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…ociation with black nationalism, and their embodiment of that modern paradox—standing as images of black dignity and pride as well as an index of the “social and economic marginalization” of the community from which they emerged. The origin of this project, we’re told, was with a 2007 episode of BET’s American Gangster devoted to the infamous career of Jeff Fort. Natalie Moore, a journalist and author of a book about masculinity in hip-hop, watc…
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…ear reactors? Certainly. Does it strengthen our resolve to develop an ever better understanding of seismology? You bet. Do these guarantee that, going forward into an age of accelerating climate change and rapidly depleting oil reserves, we won’t take one hit after another to our most deeply-held belief as modern people: that we can do a better job of running the planet than the planet can? No. There is no guarantee whatsoever that we will emerge…
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…bout tonight. They don’t act, and they don’t worry anymore about results, except those which will be occasionally delivered through prayer. If we could pray away abortion, however, it would have been over a long time ago. And those are just a few examples. All of this raises the question of whether the tactic of deception—more, perhaps, than the tactic of violence against abortion providers—will divide those who want to criminalize abortion on rel…
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…ersal fact that every American, or at least every American student using Texas textbooks, must accept as truth. On the other hand, some biologists along with neuroscientists, psychologists, and other intellectuals see evolutionary theory and knowledge about the brain as a way to better understand that most basic of religious elements: morality. 8. Sports Values: Where do Americans get their moral sensibilities, learn lessons about right and wrong,…
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…re left with an even bigger problem than before: Who made this ultra-complex God? A hyper-complex megaGod? It makes plain sense, according to Occam’s razor, to stop before we get to the first God. The complex universe is enough. Ergo, in all likelihood, God does not exist. This argument, which boils down to Well, who made God, then?, assumes that God is a thing like any other thing. It assumes that God must exist in the same way the moon exists, i…
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…in rise above to heal his family, his community, his legacy.” The ten-part BET documentary, executive-produced by Vick himself, relates the star’s infamous story through a series of testimonies, events (including a heartfelt speech Vick gave as part of his involvement with the Humane Society’s End Dogfighting campaign), and interviews with family and acquaintances. A contrived attempt at redeeming himself in the public eye, The Michael Vick Projec…
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…America. A few questions may help make the case about the intimate, if unexpressed, links between money and religion: Is the pursuit of wealth an ultimate value? Is self-worth tied to the accumulation of material goods? How do moral virtues connect to marketplace success? Is money a means to transcend everyday suffering and despair? Would you die to save capitalism? The society we live in, and indeed the political landscape for the foreseeable fu…
Read More…ative to Barton’s interpretation, or even someone who might just give a straight generally accepted interpretation of legal history, would only interfere with the reality that she and other right-wing Christians have been trying to create. What reality is that? One only has to look to Texas. Barton was an advisor to the Texas Board of Education and is one of the individuals most responsible for rewriting the state’s social studies curriculum to fi…
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…ion Tracy Fessenden has demonstrated, even after the King James Bible was excluded from the curriculum, “non-sectarian” textbooks and morals education in public schools would for decades be strikingly “pan-Protestant,” geared to rooting out “sectarian” immigrant religious identity. But even if Hughes was dedicated to American religious freedom, he certainly wasn’t dedicated to the freedom of Catholics within the church. Prior to his battle over th…
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