Religion Dispatches
…across lines that divide us to work for justice and the common good. This new face of religion is certainly important for people who care about religion. But politically progressive people should care about this new religious movement—primarily because it is genuinely progressive. Every major movement for social change in this country has had religious leaders in the leadership. By trying to avoid religion and deeply held values—either because of…
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…s a result, the long-term health and strength of Prosperity Gospel and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) rests on the elevation and promotion of these practices above all others. The deviations, then, are just as important in understanding how Pentecostalism is being reshaped and redefined. The Prosperity Gospel has had several names throughout its history, including the “Health and Wealth Gospel” and, as noted above, “Word of Faith,” whose ante…
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…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…
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…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…
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…eligion has the corner on the borrowing and incongruity of sacred stories. New Agers who use the sweat lodge are not so much “stealing Indian religion” as they are weaving a new religion out of strands of what they believe to be old religions. Various forms of the sweat ceremony were used by Indians from Canada into southern Mexico. In the south they’re called temescals and resemble a wet sauna or steam room; tribes in the American Southwest have…
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…nation battled European totalitarianism and Nazi genocide; how it created new struggles in America’s suburbs, fraternal organizations, schools, and courts; and how it created a rhetoric for both the Civil Rights Movement and the rise of the new religious right. Through it all, Schultz brilliantly shows that between the labor-capital divide of the 1930s and the racial divide of the 1960s was an ideological contest over the religious composition of…
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…, was that you look at billboards along the freeways, and the way that the new religions, the evangelicals, promote themselves, is exactly the way that banks do. They talk about “extra interest” from God, and it’s all individuals becoming religious because they think they can get a personal benefit out of it—and the people offering the benefit are making money out of it. So it’s a business. And that’s very different from the traditional role of th…
Read More…member’s bill on the issue was voted down by a vote of 58 to 14. Bolivia: New gender identity law gets approval and protest Members of a Christian organization protested against the approval of a new gender identity law. Colombia: Gay couple married in Cali for first time Two men became the first same-sex couple to get married in the city of Cali. The country’s constitutional court approved marriage equality on April 7. South Korea: Judge rejects…
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…s revealed. Submissions had been anonymous up to that point, discussed and promoted by a jury selected to represent (some parts of) New York City. The excitement turns to tension, then to panic. The selected design has been produced by a Muslim, an American Muslim architect of some renown named Mohammed Khan, and the committee is flabbergasted. How can they present a design proposed by a Muslim to officially remember 9/11? But on what basis can’t…
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…aring with Larry King (for the full hour) and on Oprah’s popular talkfest, promoting the new HBO documentary “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” produced by Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Oprah tried her best to pin Ted down and get him to admit he is a homosexual,” J. Lee Grady, the editor of Charisma magazine, reported. “Ted balked, saying that his sexuality is complicated. He explained that he had sexual experiences in the…
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