Religion Dispatches
…r-the-top parody group of hate groups. Even their Web site at godhatesfags.com looks like a deft parody of hate sites. In fact, compare WBC’s Santa attack to a similar piece over at Landover Baptist, an openly stated religious parody site. If WBC’s goal is to turn America against gays and lesbians, Iraq veterans and now Santa, they have been woefully incompetent. However, they do tend to foster more tolerance, and even some acceptance. Ask even th…
Read More…e the presidential election and well before Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade comes the first, albeit relatively kind and gentle, salvo in America’s “War on Christmas.” The Reverend Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association is proud to offer holiday trinkets sure to become a sacred hand-me-down in Christmas-embattled families all across the nation; a new Christmas button, and a glossy sticker, emblazoned with the slogan: “It’s OK to say Merry Chri…
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…e students who major in the social sciences and humanities are likely to become less religious, while those majoring in education are likely to become more religious. But students majoring in biology and physical sciences remain just about as religious as they were when they started college. Of course, the article itself is not really about a causal link between either religiosity and choice of major or the impact of college major on religiosity….
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…minate your life, and find what it is you’re missing.” It’s not a terribly complex or comprehensive answer, but offers a distinct alternative to the God-haunted, belief-oriented versions of religion offered by my C-grade student named Bill. Bill gets this low grade because his definition of religion appears to have been culled solely from Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary in which religion is essentially defined, in solid US-Protestant style…
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…berries. (And maybe drinking beer out of a brown bag.) Over at margaretcho.com the knives are coming out, and, like I said, some bags of poo for throwing. Someone over there just invited Cho to “move to the Middle East.” Or, more precisely, “f**ing move to the Middle East.” Because she loves the desert? I don’t really get this. No, I do. It’s just that it’s really such a leap, from pro-choice feminist to Lady Bin Laden. Right now, after covering t…
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…on of jumper cables to start a necessary conversation.” In a recent “Guest Commentary” titled “Becoming a Christian Citizen: Electoral Lessons from the Religious Right for the Religious Left,” published in the Fall, 2008 edition of The Public Eye, a publication of Political Research Associates, Clarkson wrote: The main reason why the Religious Right became powerful is not what most people may think. Some would undoubtedly point to the powerful com…
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…writings, and called to mind, with all the attention and imagination at my command, every complaint you made therein; and I did likewise with the accounts of your friends and pupils at that time. But all this did not help me to understand what you say about us. In the first of your speeches with which I am acquainted, that of 1896, you quoted two particular incidents to the accompaniment of hisses from your audience: first, that a band of European…
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…of Barack and his NICE WHITE MOTHER Ann Dunham, courtesy of BlackAmericans.com]… ++++ HIS FATHER WAS AN ISRAELI, A JEW, AND OLIVE-SKINNED—WE SEEN ALL THOSE PICTURES OF HIS NICE ISRAELI FAMILY. HIS MOTHER IS KANSAN, ATHEIST, AND WHITE. SO—WHERE ARE ALL THOSE PICTURES OF HIS NICE WHITE MOTHER AND HIS NICE WHITE GRANDPARENTS—THE ONES WHO RAISED HIM ALL THOSE EARLY YEARS? HIS FATHER DESERTED HIS MOTHER AND HIM WHEN HE WAS VERY YOUNG AND MOVED BACK TO…
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…n of their children. The children of the YFZ community are alive and one day they will tell us about their experiences, unlike the children who died at Mount Carmel. Comments? We enthusiastically welcome any response to this story, or to any of our features. Write to us!…
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…tradition, let alone among the three, are vast, confounding, and indeed incommensurable. Reform Jews have more liberal views of God than Orthodox; Protestants and Catholics disagree about how to factor Jesus Christ into the God equation; and progressive Muslims understand Allah in a radically different light than fundamentalist Muslims. All this internal theological diversity for each religion makes agreement across traditions a lost cause. Accor…
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