Religion Dispatches
…le of Regnery points out, the company, founded by Henry Regnery in 1947 in Chicago, and [i]nitially affiliated with the University of Chicago’s “Great Books” series, … became a leading publisher of old-guard, conservative writers such as Russell Kirk, James Burnham, and William F. Buckley, Jr.“ After being bought by Eagle Publishing in 1993, the company turned to red-meat conservatism, and published works by such authors as Newt Gingrich, William…
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…n taught students both “the Christian and American way of life.” Nearby at Chicago’s Moody Bible Institute, the president informed one donor in 1947 that MBI taught “the old-fashioned kind of Americanism.” Perhaps most famously, the fundamentalist stalwart Bob Jones University clung to the notion that evangelical values were conservative patriotic values and vice versa. Second-generation leader Bob Jones Jr., for example, told audiences in the 196…
Read More…nix and the Dark Star. One of these events took place at City Lit Books in Chicago on Friday, October 12. The well attended event, audio of which is also available as a special episode of the Exvangelical podcast, concluded with an interview with Josiah, conducted by Blake Chastain and yours truly. 2) Exvangelicals Make National News, Including Television Debut In 2018, exvangelicals continued to make progress in terms of media representation, wit…
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…lines of division. Just two months before his assassination he traveled to Chicago to enlist the women of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), which included in its ranks 10,000 dues-paying, welfare-receiving members in over 100 chapters. At the meeting, welfare rights leader, Etta Horn, asked Dr. King about his position on the recent passage of anti-welfare legislation. His answer revealed his unfamiliarity with the fight around welfa…
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…William Derl-Davis, a reverend from the Independent Spiritualist Church in Chicago, and medium Joseph DeLouise exorcise the home of two newlyweds who claimed to be experiencing strange disturbances after moving into their new apartment. The crew were given crosses to wear for protection. DeLouise entered a trance and assumed the persona of an old woman whose spirit could not rest. Derl-Davis administered communion to the spirit and the exorcism wa…
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…ng problems in the conjoined histories of families and corporations in the United States. Not only how so many businesses are family-owned businesses at their origin, but also how so many contemporary corporations promote themselves as like families, amplifying the rhetoric of mutuality and care in part to obscure the way they are offering fewer benefits and expanding the ranks of contingent labor. In part, too, to prod its workers to keep going,…
Read More…student development said at a student information session reported in the Chicago Tribune. “What really breaks my heart is that there are real people that are affected by our decision. But if we don’t win this case, the implications down the road in terms of what the government will tell us what we can and cannot do will be potentially more significant.” This plays into the idea advanced by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is represen…
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…ul way.” As a Senior Fellow at American Progress, a theology professor at Chicago Theological Seminary and its former president, Thistlethwaite has seen, firsthand, how money and power have not only influenced the political and financial system, but how it has affected those at the bottom of the economic scale. Her forthcoming book is: #Occupy the Bible: What Jesus Really Said (and Did) about Money and Power. “Statistics show that 50% of American…
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…urses in Delhi, using curricula from a martial arts academy she attends in Chicago. Demand for classes jumped dramatically after the Pandey murder, a situation which Nancy Lanoue, the Chicago school’s founder, compared to America in 1993: “When the Mia Zapata murder occurred… self-defense was getting attention from many folks who usually ignored it.” Lanoue (who, like Epperson, is versed in Buddhist philosophy), sees a distinction between self-def…
Read More…zones.” (h/t Naomi Klein for that coinage.) Women from North Dakota joined Hawaiians who joined Filipinos in describing themselves as people who live in Sacrifice Zones. This is the same logic that has catalyzed Black Lives Matter and Occupy: some people are more human than others, this logic goes—you can sacrifice the people who are not as human as you are. You may even have to just to stay alive. The outcome at the COP21 shines a bright light on…
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