Religion Dispatches
…hyperbolic, but I didn’t see much spirituality in Smith’s atheistic survivalist. One gets the sense that this film won the People’s Award in this category not because of its intrinsic spirituality, but simply because more voters had seen I Am Legend than Into the Wild. There are fewer obvious puzzlers in the Best Spiritual Film category, but there are some glaring omissions. Juno and Atonement made the list, but where are There Will Be Blood and D…
Read More…find is focused on Christians (judging only, mind you, by the couple dozen listed on the website, since the PDF download of the entire list malfunctioned). So, assuming the remaining five-hundred something are largely or exclusively focused on hostility toward Christians, the survey would more accurately be called Christian Hostility in America (which really highlights the ambiguity in the survey’s title, I think); and 2) Given the auspicious timi…
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…wd and the questions pour out—not about poaching or the ivory trade, but a list of questions that I might very likely hear in any one of the courses I teach on religion: “I hear elephants have incredible memory—how does that work?” “I hear they have rituals for how they bury the dead?” “How do they mourn?” “How do they play?” “How are their communities, herds organized? I hear they rely on matriarchs?” “I’ve heard stories that the orphans now in t…
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…if at least half didn’t mention Coe, don’t include him. Well, Coe made the list, at number four, pictured with Bush, Sr., under the headline, “The Stealth Persuader.” The secret to his stealth is simple: In a city where everybody wants to be in the news, Coe isn’t seeking publicity. Way back in 1966, when he first began assuming leadership of the organization he’d come to re-brand as the Family, he sent out a memo declaring that the time had come…
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…ess. Through his efforts to build and expand the evangelical and fundamentalist alternative media ecosystem—launching CBN well over three decades before Fox News Channel came on the scene in 1996—Robertson has done incalculable damage to American civil society. In 1991, he published a book that popularized New World Order conspiracy theories among evangelicals, and his influence is reflected in our current post-truth political landscape, in which…
Read More…Minnesota Public Radio reports, “led the national response to the clergy abuse scandal in 2002 and helped write the U.S. Catholic Church’s policy on abuse.” He said he couldn’t remember if he ever received a list of abusers from his predecessor, if he investigated cases of abuse, or why he never released the list of 33 priests “credibly accused” of abuse by the diocese. I guess he wasn’t on duty….
Read More…r, over the years, we have seen that paradigm change. 2012 witnessed religious people and organizations at the forefront of LGBT advancement.” This from Ross Murray, at GLAAD, as part of an introduction to a list of Five LGBT Religious Advances of 2012. It’s a short list, but each item is a biggie: marriage equality, Catholic support, pro-LGBT Mormons… hey, next year we’ll get a proper Top Ten. …
Read More…d authored a book called, Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation. Leo emailed Hardy to let her know of the connection, but noted that she had not actually read the book. Hardy said that was good enough for her and made a motion to remove the book from a proposed reading list. Hardy has been trying to pare down the lengthy proposed reading list. Except that it was a different Bill Martin, a DePaul University philosophy professor….
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…ldn’t even bother to spell all the names of the slain black Americans they list correctly.) Then, finally, they devote the lengthiest section to religious freedom. The letter reads, “A well-financed war is now being waged by the gay and lesbian community in the US and abroad on the faith of our ancestors.” What? They go on to say that it’s insulting to the memory of black civil rights leaders to compare their movement to the one for LGBT rights, a…
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…experience exactly what he does. In addition to that, when Paul provides a list in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 of the people to whom Jesus appeared he not only uses the word ‘appeared’ four times, which is standard for a vision, he includes himself in that list. Paul sees the experiences that the other followers of Jesus had of Jesus after his death as belonging in the same category as his own. Finally, for me the question isn’t whether or not the resurr…
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