Religion Dispatches
…rous rampage. This phrase, however, is somewhat like the English language expression, “Lord of mercy,” that can be expressed by anyone in a moment of travail regardless of the degree of their religiosity. More interesting, the online community of ISIS supporters were quick to adopt him as their own. According to my research assistants who have been following jihadi-related Twitter feeds, there was online cheering minutes after the act. When the at…
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…ain drain from campuses such as Wheaton. The contemporary Muslim-American experience of freedom, surveillance, and suspicion reflects much of the long history of race, religion, and “difference” in American history. The fears harken back to nativist movements familiar in American history, most especially to the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s, which tried to ban Catholic immigration and perceived Catholics as a dire threat to the American Republic…
Read More…2000. In the 1990s he served as mediator in an attempt to end the conflict between the Mexican government and the indigenous Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas. Though he was asked to step down as mediator for supposedly favoring the Zapatistas, the tentative truce between the two groups has been sustained since 1998. He is remembered as an advocate for the Indigenous who not only promoted their full humanity, but also respected their r…
Read MoreIt’s fitting that Nanette Asimov, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and Isaac Asimov’s niece, covered the failing of the Rapture for her newspaper. She details the story of a man who drove across the country with his family from Maryland to celebrate the event in the empty parking lot of the Family Radio station in Oakland, California, where this whole ridiculousness began. There is no gloating, or smugness in Asimov’s words, only a simple recou…
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…e alternative was to ignore most visionaries while selecting just a few to promote as exemplary. Bishop Ricken is savvy: Adele Brise and her Virgin are perfect examples of a safe apparition that poses no threat to the Catholic hierarchy and official doctrines. For one thing, Adele only had three visions of the Lady in shining white, which she immediately confessed to the local priest. For another, the Lady’s messages to Adele were uncontroversial,…
Read More…uprising, Hagee wrote in his weekly update, “The American media, with the exception of FOX News, is presenting the Muslim Brotherhood as moderate and lovers of democracy. This is utter nonsense. This is the hysterical jabber of our State Department that once again has fumbled the ball in the Middle East.” He then predicted that a Muslim Brotherhood figure would emerge as leader of Egypt, and “will appear initially as a moderate and within a few we…
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…rch were, indeed, a robustly social experience, Facebook would enrich and extend that experience, enhancing week-to-week retention through ongoing conversation with valued friends—just as it appears to do with undergraduates moving from the first to the second year of college. Thin connections in face-to-face settings are not magically transformed by technology. Other data suggests deeper reasons for believers and seekers’ abandonment of the insti…
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…the World won’t be for another six months, according to Harold Camping, a San Francisco-area radio host and the owner of Family Radio. His web site, wecanknow.com, says that Oct. 21 will be the day “when He will destroy the world and all that is therein.” Camping’s followers around the country have been promoting the big day by putting up billboards and driving vehicles with placards. But this is not the first time Camping has predicted Judgment…
Read More…te: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America, attempts to draw parallels between her experience in Lebanon and an Islamic threat to American democracy. When Muslims became a majority in Lebanon (“they multiply much more quickly than we do”), [Gabriel claimed] Christians were “attacked for tolerance, open-mindedness, and multiculturalism.” (At the same time, Gabriel derides “political correctness” as ignorant and dangerous.) Gabriel added that “b…
Read More…ews, this weekend isn’t just Super Bowl Sunday, it’s also Porn Sunday. The XXXChurch is using videos featuring NFL quarterbacks to get churches talking about porn addictions. Fox Sports rejected another religiously-themed Super Bowl ad. This time they said no to an ad featuring John 3:16. In Fox’s defense, there was no Rainbow Man in the commercial, which we all know is the proper context for John 3:16 at a football game. In Alabama, a meditation…
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