Religion Dispatches
…paying for my daughter’s college education. Seriously, I wish I could have written Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age. It is one of those magisterial books about history that has become part of history. Books like that happen once in a generation. Sigh. What’s your next book? It is on a less-than cheerful subject—the decline of Christianity in the West. I’m wondering what forms Christianity will take, and what wisdom it will bear, as its hold on its a…
Read More…refuge in the Catholic church. Indeed, statements like these may be very exciting to the hierarchy of the Catholic church, who get a bit nervous anytime the Church of England grants more rights to women than they are ready (or, more accurately, willing) to give. However, it is a sad reflection of the sexist tendencies of the Catholic church that these clergy opposed to women’s rights would turn to the Catholic church for support. And it is an eve…
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…chance, can it? It must be that the ideology and the subculture turn non-sex-abusers into sex abusers. Well, I don’t know that we can say the last bit yet, for reasons I’ll explain in a minute. But meanwhile, let me risk stating the obvious and point out that there is plenty in Quiverfull Christianity just crying out for scrutiny and critique, including how it is able to handle sexual abuse. A repressive Christian subculture predictably will—and e…
Read More…e Muslim Brotherhood lurks in every corner of America. This document, “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America” — authored by a single Brotherhood member in 1991 — is virtually unknown to people outside the “creeping shari’ah” and “stealth jihad” cottage industry, but within that world it has been used to create a mythology around a supposedly global plot. That document lies at the heart of the Clari…
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…rt ritual. Those fabric beacons shone powerfully for those of us who have experienced marginalization, had to code switch from setting to setting, or learned to express ourselves through subtle cues beyond formal language. While it’s not a huge surprise that some of Ginsburg’s collars will rest in museums—like holy relics, the objects touched by our heroes often end up behind glass, visited by modern pilgrims—it’s also unusual for such a textile t…
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…evils” of secular society such as “abortion on demand, fornication, homosexuality, sexual entertainment, state usurpation of parental rights and God-given liberties, statist-collectivist theft from citizens through devaluation of their money and redistribution of their wealth, and evolutionism taught as a monopoly viewpoint in the public schools.” At the extreme right wing of Dominion Theology is a relatively obscure theological movement that Mik…
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…bit the church from hoarding this wealth (though other provisions of the tax code do). Transparency would simply require the church to disclose the details of their cache. Sunlight does not burden religious liberty, it cures fraud and abuse. Asking for transparency from every nonprofit is perfectly legal, but Congress has not acted. In an era of congressional gridlock and where civil rights laws demanding equality are maligned as anti-religious li…
Read More…es who were fearful of Tea Party demagoguery on immigration. Edwards, for example, maintained, “we make a mistake in lumping all these people who are on the edge with that extremist element,” and “we’re missing an opportunity” to work with those people on critical economic issues. Edwards recounted — yes —a story of a constituent who came to a town hall, and told her that she was a tea partier, but liked what her congresswoman had to say. At one p…
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…y and Titus both read the secular language of the Constitution in the context of the invocation of “the Creator” in the Declaration of Independence: “Inalienable rights are endowed by the Creator.” These rights, both Rushdoony and Titus contend, are not granted by either document, only recognized in them; these rights exist only because they were granted by God. That “endowed by the Creator” argument has been made repeatedly by Republican politic…
Read More…icult challenge. He needs to own his Liberal religious credentials and to explain why they are sensible. And he must do so in an increasingly “know-nothing” religious atmosphere. His most reasoned issues are taken as evidence that he’s had too much legal training and isn’t really religious. Meanwhile, McCain’s strident univocality is taken as a sign of faith. It really is all upside down. But the challenge on the left in this election season will…
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