Religion Dispatches
…individuals, while conference co-organizer Julia Hunter will film “It Gets Better” videos by and for Mormons. “That this conference is even happening is hard evidence that things are getting better,” says Hunter. “I hope that the energy generated here this weekend will continue to ripple outward into our community with love and understanding; that the conversation will continue—on the web, in our chapels, with our visiting teachers, between brothe…
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…ight divisions. The Pew social conservatism index reveals some deep chasms between the evangelical left/center and right. On social issues, the differences are most pronounced on the issues of stem cell research, abortion, and the morning after pill. A majority of left/center evangelicals support stem-cell research, legalized abortion, and access to the morning after pill without a prescription. There is a remarkable 50-point gap between left/cent…
Read More…pulpy example of a larger pattern of scriptural citation that obscures and promotes tensions between market forces and nationalism, dynamics I discuss in depth in my book, The Babylon Complex (Oxford University Press, 2014). A reboot of the older Jack Ryan series—based on Tom Clancy novels like Hunt for Red October—Shadow Recruit uses an all new screenplay by Adam Cozad and David Koepp. Still, the film is highly reminiscent of the earlier series’…
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…monstrations, and other aggressive activities. So, what’s the relationship between people who actually believe that Jonah was swallowed by a whale and suicide bombings? The film doesn’t really make those connections, nor could it, because they don’t connect. The broader connections between belief and violence could have (and, I’d say, should have) been made, but it would have taken some much more careful consideration of the topic at hand. What Ma…
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…taken out of their ancient context and tacked onto existing Western civil codes and enforced by the government. That is not shariah, which has a sophisticated legal methodology of application. That’s just making up Islamic-sounding laws and calling it “shariah law.” The shariah-based legal system, which had operated for a millennium, was dismantled under Western colonization of Muslim lands, starting in the 18th century. Nearly 90% of Muslim land…
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…tirely without reference to any specific religion—and I’d be happy to take bets on whether or not a Mike Pence prayer was Christian—it is utterly inappropriate. I mean, does anyone seriously think that Graham and George defended Pence assuming that it wasn’t an explicitly Christian prayer? Also, putting aside the fact that this godless liberal can only afford inexpensive wine, did Merritt stop to think about the relationship of the praying Pence i…
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…sents a much different global reality. Here the value at stake is not just freedom of speech, but freedom of conscience. The real contest is not between atheists and believers, but between those who affirm the equality of all persons of conscience and those who deny it. Aan was arrested in a small town in West Sumatra on January 18 after a number of local residents assaulted him at work in an act of self-styled vigilantism. They were reacting to s…
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…butter; it is the very thing that drives many people into my classes. For better or worse, it is often the conventionally religious students who seem satisfied (sometimes smugly so) with shallow understandings of their own traditions—to say nothing of anyone else’s religion. Meanwhile, some of the spiritual students (though certainly not all) are those who work the hardest to figure out what they can believe in or sign on for, while still maintai…
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…al election officials to oversee the vote-counting process. He shared a QR code for Fight the Fraud, an online training project.” Nelson continues: Lance Wallnau interrupted, “And then when they kick everyone else out, you’re a spy in the camp!” Wallnau surveyed the crowd. “God can’t make this any easier,” he said. “Stand up and I’m going to induct you. I’m serious!” Wave upon wave of the Michiganders stood, by the hundreds, pledging to apply for…
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…on. … In the United States, The Fundamentals, a series of essays published between 1910 and 1915 by conservative evangelical theologians, emphasized the necessity to believe in the literal truth of scripture. This helped reify the relationship between the Jews of the present and the Israelites of old. In the view of many in the Christian West, Palestine was understood to be ‘‘empty,’’ and this emptiness should be filled by Jews, the descendants of…
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