Religion Dispatches
…ce of Christianizing the world than this? It’s regrettable, I think, that “cheap grace” has turned into a kind of meme that Rod Dreher can toss into his debate with Andrew Sullivan without any reference to the context in which Bonhoeffer coined the term. The Gestapo didn’t hang Dietrich Bonhoeffer in April 1945 because he had taken a stand for sexual abstinence (which he hadn’t). Heinrich Himmler ordered Bonhoeffer to be hanged for treason: for i…
Read More
…we’re talking about ancient Rome, 18th century Japan, or Pat Robertson in 21st century United States. The desire to regain control in the face of terrifying events is so strong we might as well call it an imperative. We will do or say almost anything to put ourselves back in charge; even if that means accepting the blame or assigning it to another. I’m sure Governor Ishihara (a very capable person under most circumstances) must have been feeling t…
Read More
…self-interrogation boiled, my hand extended to the right. I reached for my phone, but I found nothing. At first I laughed at my instinct, my muscle memory. The phone, with its glowing screen, gave me solace and control. But I was tied to my cushion for another hour, and in this ashram for another day, so email would have to wait. I panicked. My heart raced. Would my editor be asking for me? Would a reply from that politician’s secretary sit unansw…
Read More
…as a Master’s student at Fuller working the switchboard part-time, and the number one phone call that came through went something like this: “Can you connect me to C. Peter Wagner’s Church Growth Institute? I’d like to buy some materials.” No one was happier than I was when he retired from Fuller and moved to Colorado Springs! I felt like I worked at a catalog call-in center. Seriously. I would never have expected to be talking about Wagner in con…
Read More
…y from Victorian sentimentalism. Such angels are on sale at reduced price; cheap wares for cheap faith. It would be an error, however, to fully dismiss pop culture angels. Despite the fact that representations of angels in film and television, comics and music, paperback novels and posters, are filtered through market concerns, such pop culture can still speak to human meaning—and because of that they merit our attention. Besides, the bulk of art…
Read More
…and unity, not just one God but one ideology, and, ultimately, one ruling class. American democracy, I argue, should be a cacophony. The irony is that fundamentalist intellectuals came to a deeper understanding of that noise during their long years in the cold. Populist fundamentalists recognized that the ostensibly moderate center excluded them, even suppressed their views, that the public square wasn’t so public after all; elitist fundamentalis…
Read More
…“card-carrying Christians” took the image as their own defense of a middle-class American way of life against its atheist competitors. The 1960s’ battles over Jesus’ race and class that came from the freedom struggle, liberation theology, and countercurrents against both replayed many of these same image battles. In the era of rising income inequality, the Tea Party, and Occupy, there is no reason to think that contending groups on the political s…
Read More
…he Washington Post reports. “Because, you know, it’s been banned.” Finland: 800+ same-sex couples married in first month; Lutheran priests barred from officiating More than 800 same-sex couples were married in March after marriage equality went into effect on the first of the month; 770 had already been in civil partnerships. The Lutheran Evangelical Church has decreed that priests are not permitted to marry same-sex couples and some bishops warne…
Read More
…s, though they made a valiant effort—and they understood the ugly race and class dimension of American imperialism. Thinking about Coffin’s legacy, I had to ask myself exactly what I have been doing during the current class war—a siege that is far more severe and ugly than the one that sent mainly working-class and rural kids to fight and die for nothing in the rice paddies of Vietnam. Today, obviously, our privileged young people do not have to w…
Read More
…y little to what most Americans should know about Christianity among black Americans. Most Americans are largely unaware of the diverse Christian congregations and denominational structures that comprise what is called the Black Church. For many Americans, the oratory, quasi-liberal politics, and charismatic swagger of Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Jesse L. Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Tavis Smiley are the primary windows into Christianity in black…
Read More