Religion Dispatches
…, the truth is, the church, like any human institution, changes and adapts to present circumstances, sometimes better than others. Given the magnitude of the changes being currently experienced in American society, the best hope for white American Christianity might be to just leave it all behind, and wait to see what new thing God will bring about in its place….
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…o look at positions very much in the minority is equally revealing: 42% of Americans think that society has become “too soft and feminine.” 40% believe that newcomers pose a threat to American society 31% think that “God intended America to be a new promised land where European Christians could create a society that could be an example to the rest of the world.” 28% believe the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from former president Dona…
Read More…the close ties between these organizations and the apocalyptic wing of the American evangelical world — and the American Jewish establishment bears blame for glorifying that relationship, as well as for its role in the destruction of democracy in Israel, and of liberal Zionism. (For example, I have reported on two of the organizations Beinart discusses, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major American…
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…da. You expect to see Cubans there, but you’ll also find a huge Venezuelan American community, a huge Nicaraguan American community, a huge Puerto Rican American community—all there for Trump. One of the most militant rallies I’ve seen. But elsewhere it inoculates everyone from the R-word: How can Kyle Rittenhouse be racist when some of his best friends are Black? How can we be racist when we love Candace Owens? That’s exactly how Eric Metaxas int…
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…anti-LGBT violence and discrimination that remains rampant in the Central American nation. Conference participants also highlighted the strong influence the Roman Catholic Church and evangelical Christians have on Honduran society and how they can try to use the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to ensure LGBT people in the country are treated equally. El Salvador: Report on vulnerability of LGBT people Human Rights First…
Read More…ight wing and hate each other. I will not hate Christians. I will not hate Americans. I will not hate English people because they are not from the European Union anymore and going right. Our generation really wants peace. I think that the first step is to say no to this whole system, to the government, to the people who are trying to separate us by our ethnicities, colors, and I don’t know what. Turkey: Gay Syrian refugee murdered A gay Syrian ref…
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…, pushing back against negative ‘anti’ labels and leveraging the perennial American concern with freedom, or lack thereof. The Truth Over Fear Summit II was preceded by the Health Freedom Summit, an online event held in February 2021 with speakers promoting anti-vaccination, anti-mask, and pro-homeschool views. Speakers included Paul Thomas, a Portland doctor who recently had his medical license revoked for endangering patients by refusing to vacc…
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…Assissi preached in the wilderness, or John Wesley and his followers held services in the coalfields. So why exactly would it be different in a Zoom service? That’s not a rhetorical question. A preference for in-person worship is understandable and not even necessarily wrong. A case can be made for it. My point is simply that Warren hasn’t made that case, either in terms of sociology or theology. Meanwhile, the argument she has made overlooks the…
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…the impact that the concept of personal spirituality has had on organized American Judaism. Americans today feel much freer to explore ceremonial and ritual practices that intrigue them regardless of what their community thinks of those particular ideas. This has allowed Jews to move in a number of different directions, including seemingly contradictory ones. I found some of these contradictory impulses fascinating. For example, there have been a…
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…practice. My research has looked at what a lot of second-generation Asian Americans are doing. For example, Vietnamese-Americans who are Catholics are also developing home shrines, a practice of honoring ancestors. Their approach revealed how they were doing it in a hybridized way—embracing both the traditional and the personally meaningful. On their shrine they’d place something traditional, like just a photo and maybe fruits, but they would als…
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