Religion Dispatches
…ing, vibrant, progressive religious movement in America. This will be good news to so many Americans who have become frustrated with the troubled relationship between religion and politics: an exclusive claim on faith and values from the right and a radical divorce of faith from politics on the left. But this new group of religious leaders is reenvisioning religion in public life and blazing a trail that goes beyond partisan politics to work for a…
Read More
…ters especially in southern states is a phenomenon suggesting the power of American Christianity to shape American electoral patterns. Black religious lives matter when the votes are tallied. ______________________________ Who is the “We”? Yolanda Pierce Professor of African American literature and religion at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of Hell Without Fires: Slavery, Christianity & the African American Spiritual Narrative The frenz…
Read More…In leaving, there are social consequences and challenges in navigating the new world—a new meaning system—one that’s quite different from the religious one. Research shows that individuals who leave Christian fundamentalism experience a situational crisis in leaving the religion—a unique meaning-making framework focused on the sacred and divine—and undergo a meaning-making process to achieve a positive resolution in leaving the religion. The meani…
Read More
…is as global as it is local. The NAR also reaches into the US from other countries in the same way that NAR reaches other countries from the US. While this sense of global vision and mission isn’t new in Christianity, there’s much that is new in this important contemporary movement that demands attention and better reporting for the first, rough draft of history….
Read More
…eir home churches and satellite churches around the country and the world. New Apostolic Reformation The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), on the other hand, has been able to operate somewhat out of the general public’s purview, save for the work of writers at Talk To Action, who have chronicled the changes and escalations in the movement. The NAR roots are also firmly within the boundaries of the historic Pentecostal movement. Foundational to NAR…
Read More
…s and communities; and those who participate in this will also lead in the new Reformation. Sarah Palin’s video of hands being laid upon her looks like a like a normal Pentecostal practice at a church service, but the minister/apostle, Bishop Muthee, was part of the New Apostolic Movement. It is clear that both the basic theological tenets of what Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement denominations promote and what scholars research are not…
Read More…y or more, to the interests of the child,” Aguila said, according to Latin American news network TeleSUR…. However, the issue has been contentious in the largely Catholic country, which has faced religious opposition to same-sex marriages and adoption. A 2013survey found that 52 percent of Mexicans supported same-sex marriage rights, but only 24 percent backed the adoption of children by such couples. The Roman Catholic Church opposes same-sex mar…
Read More
…iberation. A first step TGL on its own, sadly, is unlikely to inspire. The new ‘New Age’ The roots of Goop lie in utopian dreams of other ways of being; the same set of impulses that drove the idea of universal human rights, jobs for all, communes, racially-integrated worlds, and both spiritual and this-worldly democracy. During the 60s and 70s, the intertwined movements for Black power, gay liberation and women’s liberation rose to prominence, ga…
Read More
…eople who kill animals. Were Sears simply a critic and comedian shattering New Age pieties his videos would still be clever and hilarious, but Sears is a full-time life coach whose work focuses on emotional healing. When Sears notes that he too is guilty of the behaviors he lampoons, he puts himself in the far more interesting tradition of those who criticize and question the beliefs they themselves hold. I recently visited this New Age Stephen Co…
Read More
…irtight claims to divinity, it’s made for some problematic theology in the American context. Simply put, what we witness in American Christianity is a battle over which Christianity represents Christ and his perfection, thus conferring ultimate and total authority upon opposing interpretations of the Christian faith. Perhaps it’s my own Jewish experiences that allow me to favor Jesus’ humanity over Christ’s divinity. My own personal history with J…
Read More