Religion Dispatches
…ernaturalist”— as though its message of redemption and liberation of the African-American community has nothing to do with it. And then there’s the bit about “religious liberalism’s urge to follow secular liberalism in embracing the sexual revolution and all its works.” Cute. I wonder if a Times columnist might not want to consider the use of statistics in his work, like this one: 99% of all American women who have had sex have used some form of b…
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…re their intellectual ancestors, but this is willfully misreading the historical record as surely as creationists misread biological evidence. Contemporary American fundamentalism, from its pre-millennial dispensationalist eschatology to its free-market economic ideology is at odds with the actual ideology of American Puritanism. The reductionist ‘culture wars’ obscure the nuances of history and culture, while failing to recognize the full complex…
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…ral, Western, and Southern Sudan, where the populations are mostly black African. A major cause of the war was the application of shari’ah law in 1983, which incited rebellion from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), a secular, though largely Christian group now ready to declare independence for Southern Sudan. But the Khartoum government and the SPLM have not agreed on how they will share Sudan’s oil reserves, and ethnic conflicts on t…
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…cies of the LDS, Seventh-day Adventist, Assemblies of God, and United Pentecostal Church International outnumber the domestic membership of these quintessentially American denominations. As globalizing churches they can ill afford to remain captive inside Fortress America; as pilgrim churches they remind all Americans of our time as sojourners and of the enduring value of hospitality. Their histories and religious texts offer examples of trespasse…
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…, ’80s and ’90s to reduce state support for higher education and induce Americans to take out loans so that they might have ‘skin in the game.’ This was part of a larger agenda to degrade the social infrastructure of public life, as policymakers traded easy credit and access to cheap consumer goods for high wages and a measure of economic security. It is no coincidence that all of this took shape in the wake of the civil rights movement, the fract…
Read More…hing. Finally, I’m reminded of Karen Armstrong’s description of the historical mission Muslims are tasked with: “In Islam, Muslims have looked for God in history. Their sacred scripture, the Quran, gave them a historical mission. Their chief duty was to create a just community in which all members, even the most weak and vulnerable, were treated with absolute respect. The experience of building such a society and living in it would give them in…
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…’s what makes the “city on the hill” shine. That’s what, at the end of the day, offers hope for the resurrection not just of the American Dream, but of the American soul….
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…y import, sacrilege, faith and ideology, which is faith’s steely cousin. A number of years ago, I was chatting with the theologian Walter Brueggemann’s then-wife Mary on a Sunday morning. She told me she’d been bemoaning some bit of racial egregiousness or another to her husband, and asked him why he thought people had to be this way. “There are two kinds of people in the world,” he replied. “Those who don’t see an order to the universe, and those…
Read More…before state houses across the country, teeming with teachers? What do America’s religions say to those Americans with disabilities being hauled off by Capitol cops, and to the numberless people standing against legal authority that suspects them for the crime of simply being black or Muslim or queer? If we think about Catonsville not just as a curiosity, a minor episode in the history of radical chic, but as a provocation or a template, what do…
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…his project, creates the more egalitarian fictional characters Harold and Erica—a gleaming American power couple who face distinct social challenges in order to grow and develop in a perpetual present (where, untethered from history, they are able to find Facebook friends and send text messages throughout their long lives). Brooks dresses them up and puts them, narratively, into social situations (breastfeeding, falling in love, job acquisition) i…
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