Religion Dispatches
A U.S. District Court judge has denied a motion by Proposition 8 supporters in California to vacate the ruling against the ballot measure because the judge in the case is gay. Last August, Judge Vaughn Walker struck down Prop 8, which repealed the legalization of same-sex marriage in California by defining marriage as between one man and one woman. In his opinion, he wrote: “Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to…
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“Cease and desist” was Sarah Palin’s rebel yell at Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke last week, in a speech attacking the Fed’s plan to buy up $600 billion in government debt to stimulate the US economy. While the plan known as “quantitative easing” has been, like all monetary policy, the subject of debate, Palin’s speech wasn’t disagreement so much as it was a rallying cry for Tea Partiers, and a reassertion the Christian Reconstructionist b…
Read MoreLast week, I got a crazy email from “Joan” (who has hijacked an email list I’m on for animal rescue to send around her political opinions) arguing that Obama should be impeached because he is a Muslim (complete with a promo promising free guns, paid for by “a millionaire” who wants you “protected against what’s coming.”) The video in the email is by evangelist Jack van Impe, known for his premillennial rapture theology and his disconnected rambli…
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Racist apologetics by a popular Brigham Young University religion professor are sparking controversy, as election-year scrutiny sheds a revealing light on the persistence of racist belief among LDS Church members. On Tuesday, Randy Bott, a BYU professor of religion, told the Washington Post that the LDS Church’s historic prohibition on priesthood ordination for men of African descent was a “blessing” to blacks because they were not “ready” for pr…
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If it is true that, as theorist Sherry Turkle has claimed, that in our increasingly mediated world “we are all dreaming cyborg dreams,” it is certainly safe to say that at least some of these dreams are religious ones. In this essay, I look at four types of immersive new media that address the issue of religious identity: Waco Resurrection, a religiously-inspired first-person shooter, Noah’s Ark, a religious online reality show; Roma Victor, a ma…
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This June, HBO will launch the second season of True Blood, a soap opera featuring psychics, vampires, and shape-shifters based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series by Charlaine Harris. The story takes place in a world where vampires have discovered a synthetic beverage that can slake their thirst for blood. No longer a threat to humans, many vampires reveal themselves to the public, form advocacy groups, and begin dating human waitresses. Se…
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In early April of last year, at a conference in Jerusalem of American evangelicals organized by Pastor John Hagee, Benjamin Netanyahu told the audience that Israel had no better friends than America’s Christian Zionists. “This is a friendship of the heart, a friendship of common roots, and a friendship of common civilization,” Netanyahu said. Now, nearly a year later, with Netanyahu cobbling together a ruling coalition in Israel, three men of the…
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Ever since my daughter and I noted in the pages of Religion Dispatches that some End Times believers consider Barack Obama a serious contender for the Antichrist, I’ve kept my antennae out for the ongoing development of this discourse. Though certain conservatives floated the idea as a trial balloon during the presidential campaign—notably in an interview with John Hagee on the Glenn Beck show—that rhetoric has seldom been heard in the public squ…
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Ten Questions for Jonathan Walton on Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism What inspired you to write Watch This? My interest in African American religious broadcasting came from what I perceived to be the gaps in the fields of African American religion and Religion, Media, and Culture. For the most part, scholars of African American religion in general and black theology in particular theorize about Afro-Protestantism in…
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It was a little over three years ago, on December 20, 2005, that Judge John E. Jones III issued his ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover that intelligent design was not science, but merely repackaged creationism—and that it had no business in biology class. The hoopla was immediate and enduring. Jones’ decision launched headlines across the globe, not to mention celebrations by the trial’s plaintiffs, their legal team and science experts (who send “Merr…
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