Religion Dispatches
…New Life Church’s World Prayer Center once… …I would like to do that. It’s cheap and they have hotel rooms—prayer closets, they call them. Or take the Crystal Cathedral. Right. Philip Johnson, who was a leading postmodern architect, designed the Crystal Cathedral. So what’s going on? As these systems become more complex, they become more volatile. As they become more volatile, you have to figure out how, in the economic realm, to manage risk. You…
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…on deteriorated with the beginning of the second intifada in fall 2000 and cheap Palestinian labor became increasingly inaccessible due to curfews and roadblocks designed to prevent terrorist attacks. And they came, creating in the process a mosaic of cultural diversity. Most of Israel’s foreign workers (30 percent) came from Thailand but many migrated from the Philippines (18%), and from China (10%), Nepal (6%) and Romania (5%). They were willing…
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…er border security, we forget that such measures have grossly inflated the number of undocumented immigrants residing in the US. Half of these used to return to Mexico annually, but researchers now estimate that only one-fourth do so today; stricter border enforcement measures since 1994 have staunched the cyclical flow of the return home of millions. The crisis of 12 million “illegal” immigrants is one of our own creation. The missing clergy coul…
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…ive between a rock and a hard place. We are rarely in favor of pie in the sky. There is nothing pie-ish or sky-ish about recognizing that we have laws that have been broken, laws that are irregularly, at best, enforced, laws that were confused from the get-go. One of the immigrant members of our congregation has lived under a changing series of immigration laws in his lifetime: all progressively worse for him. He had a green card. He did a non-vio…
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…l that divides us, whatever it is. The bread and wine we use is materially cheap and unsatisfying; what we experience in them is supposed to come from a wealth beyond. In the presence of God, and among people of different races, classes, and opinions, the mass should nourish us in our common humanity. So whom exactly is one harming by boycotting, by staying home in solitary prayer? The earthly Church might miss your money in the collection—that’s…
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…“politics,” we are told time and time again, and not “theology,” as when Skye Jethani, an evangelical pastor, and cohost (with Phil Vischer of VeggieTales fame) of the podcast “The Holy Post,” nonsensically claims that evangelicalism merged with politics “over the last couple of years” and has now become about “politics” instead of “theology.” In reality, Christian nationalism has been a significant component of American evangelicalism for decade…
Read More…o doesn’t love skinks? 6. Willpower! Is magical! 7. Find an accountability partner! Every time you are tempted to sexually harass a stranger, call your partner and make a confession. 8. Wear a rubber band around your wrist and snap it every time you think about harassing a woman! Rubber bands are cheap – mere cents. Why, you could snap yourself with a rubber band more-or-less constantly for the next year, for a fraction of what any of those fancyp…
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…hat. I’m not seeing a lot of evidence that “some” adds up to a significant number. Not, at least, on the grounds of Novavax’s supposed selling point. To be fair, that’s not all there is to the piece. In fact, the question about Novavax’s allure reads like a wrapper for a bigger narrative about anti-vaxx activism merging with right-wing Christian nationalism. There’s an interesting story to be told there, and you should follow all the links in Jenk…
Read More…Pope Francis as much as anyone, I need concrete actions to back up the sentiments. Until the dogma changes, talk is cheap….
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…e each step depends on the prior step, not a one-time jackpot against unlucky odds. Why would Axe place the same tired, often-refuted argument as the centerpiece of his book? He clearly isn’t trying to win over biologists. Undeniable is a book for believers—those who are already troubled in some way by evolutionary theory and the perceived threat it poses to the origin of life from God. He calls this audience together conspiratorially, creating a…
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