Religion Dispatches
…believe in civil rights, individual autonomy, and the equal balance of power in a democratic republic had better get our houses in order and find a better strategy for opposing the next great threat to our way of life….
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…Electronica that almost requires a New Testament professor to provide an exegetical hermeneutic. The mixtape plumbs a depth in which twenty-somethings can feel comfortable; a no-judgement zone where their spirituality is not relegated to a Sunday morning experience, or divorced from the vicissitudes of their daily life. As I’ve written at Religion Dispatches before, there is a commonplace belief that there seems to be a dearth of public theologia…
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…n’t receive the help they need from family. If the civil government uses tax money to help the poor it is understood as tyrannically exceeding its biblical authority and effectively stealing money to do so. (They call such misused taxes legalized theft.) You find this position articulated in rather arcane theological form in the work of R.J. Rushdoony and other Christian Reconstructionists, but you also find it popularized in rather mainstream eva…
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…he political right are not carrying torches or Nazi flags in the streets, though. Most liberals have family and friends who believe falsehoods and aren’t violent, who don’t actively wish harm to their fellow-citizens. Their beliefs and voting patterns are infuriating. People who should have known better put us in this predicament. I want to blame, and mock, and yell at them. But compassion has to be able to coexist with righteous anger at lies and…
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…at godlessness leads to horrific destruction, as in the “Cave of Sorrows” exhibit. Many subsequent exhibits, including the one featuring “Ebenezer” the dinosaur, include pseudoscientific language that evangelicals and fundamentalists insist is every bit as scientific as actual science, since it all supposedly comes down to presuppositions and incompatible worldviews. But heavy-handed preaching also continues throughout, as it does at Ark Encounter…
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…p, probably along with white mainliners (52%) and white Catholics (51%). A better bet would be to connect with Hispanic Catholics (35%) and the sizable religiously unaffiliated (34%). Spotlight the Catholic congregations assisting Puerto Rican refugees and highlight Mike Pence’s threat to reproductive rights and education. Pennsylvania: With its highly religious—and highly conservative—central region balancing Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pennsylv…
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…g’s wellbeing. Knowing the history of the temple and its iconic angel will better explain why the damaged statue might engender a sense of providence. The Salt Lake Temple is one of more than 150 temples, but it’s where Church leaders—apostles and prophets—meet weekly and hold prayer. Brigham Young had seen the building in a vision shortly after the pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. He believed this temple would fulfill a verse in Isaiah t…
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…pubs and restaurants have been selling this data to data brokers. But I’ll bet you it’s not the pubs and restaurants selling the data. What the pub and restaurant owners are doing is scrambling for a quick solution, thinking, we’re not coders. What the hell do we do? So they find an app, and they download the app, made by a company similar to Gloo, and they’re just harvesting data. KGV: And it’s easy, and also in terms of churches of course, socia…
Read More…diciary has taken us. Everyone today seems to think the U.S. Constitution expressly provides for separation of church and state. I guess you could ask any 10 people if that is not so and I will bet you most of them will say, well, sure that is so. And some would point out that is in the First Amendment. Wrong. Miller then recommended the writings of David Barton, and proceeded to quote Benjamin Rush, who, when asked whether he was an aristocrat or…
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…y is straight out of the Christian nationalist playbook. That Hyde-Smith next turns to the Bible and its passages about slavery and thoughtcrime to justify disenfranchising Black voters is apt. She wrongly cited Exodus 20 verse 18, which is about trembling and lightning and thunder and generally being afraid of the biblical god, not the sabbath. The verse comes immediately after the prohibition on coveting your neighbor’s livestock, wives, and sla…
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