Religion Dispatches
…m again. Prevailing theme: Obama has visited unprecedented calamity on the United States of America. Subtext: might he be the Antichrist? The opening sequences set the stage. Obama is depicted as a crafty beguiler of mass audiences; he emerges from a plane out of the heavens as thousands swoon, cry, and cheer. He’s smug and self-congratulatory as he misleads his admirers with lofty promises. He was “charismatic,” a “knight in shining armor,” he “r…
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…o one thing: intimidate us into changing how we practice our faith.” First United Church of Oak Park, a mostly white, suburban Chicago congregation with more than 600 members, is affiliated with two mainline protestant denominations—the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the United Church of Christ. The UCC has been on edge since credible threats against “liberal churches” were picked up by federal law enforcement in the run up to the anniversary of J…
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…ortation made banner headlines. They were running the SS operations in the United States, probably participating in far more extensive sabotage within the United States leading up to the war. Then, much more contemporary memory hits: Nazis were blowing shit up in America and recruiting folks. That’s who this organization brought in. Well, the Family didn’t bring von Gienanth in to advise U.S. congressmen because he wasn’t allowed into the United S…
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…e-land in just a few short decades. The ascent of same-sex marriage in the United States gained much (but not all) of its initial support from churches. Many local Universalist Unitarian (UU), Disciples of Christ, and United Church of Christ (UCC) congregations, and some Episcopal churches, for example, started blessing same-sex unions as far back as the 1970s, as work by Heather White and Mark Jordan has shown. Over the years the debate and activ…
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…nd institutions and the 2021 insurrection at the capitol. No longer is the United States the world’s oldest continuous democracy, according to Polity. Political science research has shown that anocracies are most likely to experience civil war in the first few years of their durations and that transitions into anocracy from democracy (as opposed to transitions into anocracy from autocracy) leave states at a higher risk for civil war. The United St…
Read More…ermining these ordinary virtues. It’s actually quite useful to look at the United Methodist vote as a blow against the rule of reason. All of the mainline denominations (the so-called “seven sisters”), including the United Methodists, claim to be guided by reason and human experience along with the authority of the Bible and church tradition. They all say that Jesus stands for inclusive love: no one is to be regarded as “less than.” The United Met…
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…Johnson added, “to marginalize the more tolerant Anglican churches in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, suggesting that the center of the ‘true’ faith—that is, the faith that is still discriminatory towards LGBT people and women—is in Africa and the developing world.” “The African voices that have dared to stand up against overwhelming spiritual, societal, and governmental pressure, like Bishop Senyonjo, Canon…
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…ion was so boisterous that efforts to put a question about religion on the United States census fell apart. In the legal and social struggles, Catholics and Jews had effectively helped create a new right in the United States: the right to religious privacy. Concluding his work, Schultz demonstrates how the tri-faith concept softened the ground for civil rights activism and how the “Judeo-Christian” notion became so powerful that even enemies of re…
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…ovement is not as large or institutionally powerful as evangelicals in the United States, but it is an important transnational node in the growing movements of radicalized alt- and far-right ideologues. The Orthodox far-right in the United States are caught up in the global Culture Wars; whatever political ideology they align themselves with—fascism, populism, monarchism, and many of the other isms—they are typically homophobic, transphobic, anti-…
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…ers and churches], if they can disassociate from mainline churches [in the United States], which are part of the gay agenda. So [the African churches] cut the relationship, and then the American conservatives take over financially. That’s how the war is being fought. Thus, when the Africans come [to the United States] they have nothing to do with mainline churches; instead they side with American conservatives against mainline churches. And the ma…
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