Religion Dispatches
…men—a Jew, a Catholic, and an African American—that toured high schools to talk on race and religion and allow the students to meet people who were not like themselves, in many cases for the first time. These are the type of experiences that shaped me, that shape all Southerners. In Sacred Cause Desmond and Moore argue, with overwhelming evidence, that Darwin, too, was immersed in issues of race from the day he was born, and that his abhorrence fo…
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…th affirming predestination, but also needing to hasten it—matter? Why the talk of “replacement” by Earnest or the Charlottesville mob? Would knowing about any of this have helped prevent the killing? In a heartfelt letter of public apology, Earnest’s parents—sincerely, no doubt—assured us that: Our son’s actions were informed by people we do not know, and ideas we do not hold…he was raised in a family, a faith, and a community that all rejected h…
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…c, survive the war, and return home to raise a family. The war he liked to talk about (at least with me) was made up of football games with his friends, cribbage in the trenches, and the exotic surprises that Australia and the Philippines held for an Oregon farmboy. Of course, there was a good deal more to his war, but he didn’t care to talk about that. He was a proud veteran who would be buried in a Veteran’s Cemetery not far from the towns where…
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…nstitute at Canterbury Christ Church University, will give an introductory talk before the Bishop of Buckingham, Bishop Alan Wilson will speak on “Same-sex marriage and the queering project of Jesus.” He will discuss the U.K.’s experience with the introduction of same-sex marriage and describe the impact of changes in the U.K. marriage practice on both church and state. His talk will link this experience to an “emerging notion that queering is an…
Read More…o come out, she said: “I studied each one of them and the way they used to talk about gay people was not good and that made me not trust them with my problems and not only that, being Christians they did not like gay people.” She did not come out as gay, but when she attempted to seek asylum in the UK, she says the charity would not support her, and instead tried to remove from the UK, forcing a plane ticket on her. The Out and Proud Diamond Group…
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…e should be honest about it.” In my response, I challenged his claims that talk of Islamophobia is “deluded” and that “there is no such thing as Islamophobia.” He responded, but largely neglected my concerns about Islamophobia. It was surely nothing more than poor timing on his part to publish his latest defense of profiling one day after a man opened fire on a community of Sikhs, who have frequently been on the receiving end of bigoted anti-Musli…
Read More…ree tickets. The largest financial supporter of the event was a local news/talk radio station and its representatives were the only media allowed in. As I arrived with my Religion Dispatches press badge they stopped me before I even got to the door. I chatted with an AP reporter and he said AP had been trying for weeks to gain media access—but that he was there to see if he could talk his way in. By then a torrent of rain had descended on the Time…
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…ecause we’ve adopted victimizing theology. We spend all our time in church talking about how sinful and evil human beings are. The only way you can tolerate listening to that is to pass it on. We have to pass on this hostility that we have. The idea that God killed Jesus because you were a sinner is a really strange idea. It makes God an ogre. It makes Jesus a sadomasochistic victim and it makes you and me guilt-laden. Guilt never produces life. I…
Read More…list seems to be working for Beck. Part of what’s fueling the new surge of talk about Beck is the fact that he has cannily plugged right into a thorny theological issue: the question—important to evangelical Christians—of whether Mormons are actually Christians. A Pew Forum survey in 2008 showed that fewer than 50% of evangelical Christians thought so. In the last few days, talk shows and blogs have been abuzz with the same question. Yesterday, on…
Read More…logy, theology, and the like were excluded. Clerics met in small groups to talk with other clerics. What could be more wrong with this picture? Pope Francis in his final statement captured the egregious miss that was this meeting. He started off generally: “Our work has made us realize once again that the gravity of the scourge of the sexual abuse of minors is, and historically has been, a widespread phenomenon in all cultures and societies.” Then…
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