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…
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…er against similarity, familiarity, and religious mystery. Orsi’s critical compassion toward his subject matter is masterful and serves as an inspiration. What’s your next book? A cultural biography of sorts on Bishop Carlton Pearson, former protégé of Oral Roberts tentatively entitled Pentecostalism Made Pretty. Pearson will serve as a lens to examine the growth of the neo-Pentecostal/Charismatic perspective in the latter part of the previous…
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…ehind series, discussed it on the Rachel Maddow show. Jenkins subsequently complained about how Maddow edited them, so she posted the entire interview (which you can watch at the bottom of this story). The exchange is worth watching in its entirety, but I will offer a brief summary analysis of the duo’s two-step. Jenkins and LaHaye wisely distanced themselves from a bald assertion that Obama is the Antichrist, retreating instead to a somewhat more…
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…linton “called for urgent action by Arabs, Israelis, and the international community to break the cycle of Mideast violence and to move toward a comprehensive peace in the region,” Evans noted. What this really means, according to Evans, is “that Israel would be forced to give up East Jerusalem, and the holy sites beloved by Christians worldwide, as well as most of Judea and Samaria.” Evans also pointed out that Netanyahu would soon be traveling t…
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…sely chose to ignore it rather than add to the confusion. The real vampire community (as this group has come to collectively refer to itself) is in the strange position of experiencing an unprecedented level of media attention, even as they are often pejoratively characterized as being unable to discern media from reality. Don Rimer, a former police officer and “occult crimes expert” recently claimed that the Twilight novels by Stephanie Meyer hav…
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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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…out her family’s faith, Janzen’s personal takeaway messages are strikingly compassionate. As someone who has long battled my own uncomfortable ties to the organized religion that alienates me from my family, Janzen’s response to her family’s religious conviction strikes me as measured and kind. Instead of wholly rejecting biblical devotion, she questions whether practicing virtue (the type of celibate morality performed by nuns, for example) has e…
Read More…ersecution, bullying, and violence occur.” The announcement of the protest comes on the heels of an announcement by another “ex-gay” group, Exodus, that they would no longer sponsor the annual “Day of Truth” that encourages students to “counter the promotion of homosexual behavior” with a Christian message of intolerance. “All the recent attention to bullying helped us realize that we need to equip kids to live out biblical tolerance and grace whi…
Read More…al about what he knows can only make Palin nervous. The tit-for-tat snarky comments between Palin and Johnston are both funny and sad, and the tantalizing “there are some things that I know (about Sarah) that are HUGE” is a scimitar hanging over Palin’s carefully coiffed hair. His recent comment that Palin called her down syndrome baby “retarded” is either a big FAIL on his part, or an indictment of her mothering skills. No matter what he says for…
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…aths of liberal Supreme Court Justices? Pondering such matters led me to a comment thread about Robertson on Salon.com. Amid the predictable responses (much hateful mocking, a few claims that he was quoted out of context, and conflations of his Christianity with “religion” at large) someone posed this challenge: Given that all Muslims are incessantly challenged to repudiate Osama bin Laden, why aren’t liberal Christians under similar pressure to r…
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