Religion Dispatches
…on Alliance, a grassroots Mormon organization that monitored abuse within the Church, published a study documenting negligence on the part of local members and leaders in addressing abuse—and even the excommunication of some victims and accusers. In 1995, the Church established stronger guidelines and new protocols for reporting abuse, including a 1-800 number for local clergy. …
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…dabblings, Facebook profiles, and so many other moments of consumer bliss combining seamlessly with the comforts of self-governance and possessive spirituality. Choice vis-à-vis religion is self-evident and a good thing. Scholars and scientists alike have made a career out of framing religious history as a history of choice. And we, in turn, expect everything to be not just voluntary but also on-demand. But might these everyday acts within our ch…
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…hat he was coming to the LCWR as their “brother.” His humility makes it a commendable sentiment, but they are certainly not coming to the table as equals in the eyes of the Church. The outgoing LCWR President, Sr. Frances Deacon, offered a closing speech that did not let that reality go by: she spoke on the history of and need for greater involvement of women within the Church. She said, “Our situation reflects larger questions and concerns such…
Read More…” Shukla explains that “while there always have been and now are a growing number of scholars who are committed to presenting emic understandings of Hinduism, we find each year that the ‘in crowd’ created by Doniger at the AAR has yet to shift in terms of power and influence.” In light of this information, she reprimands the AAR for their support of the work and a failure to encourage academic integrity. As a Religious Studies major before law sch…
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…s, “Leviathan Has Come to America,” he warned viewers that Leviathan has become “king of America,” that the government is coming against the Gospel, and that if the wrong person is elected (Clinton), the Constitution will be destroyed by a newly liberal Supreme Court. In a June 2016 episode with Gary Heavin, founder of the fitness chain Curves International, and Mike Norris, son of actor Chuck Norris, Bakker admonished evangelicals who said they w…
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…in their own dioceses. Even so, I think the main audience for this book is comprised of serious scholars who might be inclined to take up the topic. The International Theological Commission wrote a document in 2002 that said, basically, 1) in history, men and women deacons were not the same; 2) the diaconate is distinct from priesthood; 3) women deacons is something for the Church’s Magisterium to decide. Well, that was over a decade ago, and the…
Read More…“arguably one of the most important religious leaders in the nation.” The Committee, in the end, opted for “self-reform” by these ministries, rather than greater government oversight, because “according to the Committee’s staff memo, there was a ‘high level of distrust‘ of the government by the churches under investigation and the religious advocacy groups that supported them.” The Committee’s staff memo revealed further that “the Copelands emplo…
Read More…than money. And this time I’m pulling for the atheists, because there’s no compelling argument for allowing religious organizations to be opaque about their money. And besides, there are plenty of ways to steal from nonprofits even when they do file 990s. The interesting thing about all three cases is that they reveal the compulsion to sort out the messy business of religion in America once and for all. But the wall of separation between church an…
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…eve the Gallup numbers were right, and [they thought that] the best way to combat those Gallup numbers was to ask Gallup to do another survey. And so in 1978, Christianity Today, a leading periodical for evangelicals, paid Gallup to do a big survey and in addition to just asking the born-again question, they asked questions about belief in the Bible, belief in Jesus, and intent on converting others. As a result, Gallup revised its estimate downwar…
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…he prophet. Despite accumulating over 455,000 signatures and the Wikipedia community’s refusal to remove the illustration, still no violent acts have resulted. Lost in the debate is the original intent of the prohibition. Jews and Christians should remember that the children of Israel were commanded not to make “graven images” or “any likeness” of anything in the sky, on Earth, or in the water (Exodus 20:4)—though both faiths buried their iconocla…
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