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War on Christmas Affirmed by Southern Baptist Convention

By Mark Gstohl

…six resolutions. As a Southern Baptist, I usually brace myself for the backlash created by offensive resolutions. I’ve done this since 1997 when I was awakened by a phone call from a Lutheran friend that began, “What’s with you Southern Baptists and Mickey Mouse?” I was unaware that the messengers voted on a resolution to boycott Disney because of its policies toward homosexuals. One resolution approved by the messengers this year that may not be…

A Religious History of American Neuroscience

By Leigh Eric Schmidt

…me in the SPR threw themselves behind a new contraption called the “psycho-phone” through which the inventors claimed to be hearing the voices of angels. The psychophone no doubt sounds absurd, but I can’t say that it sounds much more far-fetched than a transcranial magnetic stimulator. Both demonstrate the enduring cultural impulse toward techno-theologizing. However much neuroscientists might want to forswear an interest in the metaphysics of th…

Aliens To Arrive in Alabama Today!

By Ben Brazil

…October 14 dawning around the world, new messages have also arrived in the last several hours, like this one from an anonymous poster: Any last minute regrets, Blossom? It’s not too late to back out now and say it’s all a hoax. I truly hope this event turns out as you predicted. God knows how much humanity needs a kick up the arse! History or disappointment beckons! Others accused Goodchild of profiteering on stupidity, while some posters kept the…

Friending Pope Benedict on Facebook?

By Kate Childs Graham

…n Paul II, Pope Benedict sent the following text message to Italian mobile phone users: “Let us go forth in the joy of the risen Lord and trusting in his permanent help.” JPII had been texting Italians with a “thought of the day” while he was still alive, so Benedict was simply carrying on this tradition. Pope Benedict has more recently used text messaging to communicate with attendees throughout this year’s World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia. H…

A Color-Blind America? Don’t Fall For The Okey-Doke

By LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant

…hies. Several of my students noted that after the election results, their classmates had made comments such as “they [African Americans] can never complain anymore because they got one of theirs in the White House.” Despite the numerous problems with this perspective (which cannot fully be dealt with here), I use this statement to make the same point here that I made to my students–don’t fall for the “okey doke,” for the con. In another words, don…

Battling for the Soul of the Democratic Party

By Sarah Posner

…ca are (and, moreover, in the wake of Obama’s election, who will get their phone calls returned from the White House) certain names keep cropping up. Pastor Rick Warren, who sees no daylight between his views and James Dobson’s, but who, according to Sullivan’s book, former-DNC-chair Terry McAuliffe blasphemously didn’t know; Jim Wallis, best-selling author and activist who lambasts the religious right for its petty intolerance and the left for “n…

An Immigrant’s Tale: The Pull of the Homeland

By Shabana Mir

…membrance was an option less desirable now; at most, a baseball cap or sunglasses had to suffice. We miss, too, the comfort of being able to cry out “Ya Hayyu Ya Qayyum” (O Living, O Self-Sustaining) if the urge grabs you suddenly in the middle of teaching a physics class. The urge is almost biological, and the inability to express rapture, ecstasy, joy, desperation or humility is also almost biological, like a choking of the windpipe. Diversity p…

Religion at Decade’s End

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ces like Tehran, or Athens, or Beijing, that are armed and enabled by cell phone technology and the almost instantaneous circulation of striking images of authoritarian crackdown, impossible to contain or control. There is an old philosophical quandary posed as follows: can a fish imagine water? Similarly, Religion Dispatches exists within the very medium that it is simultaneously attempting to theorize. It is as global as the instruments it use…

‘Biblical’ Disaster in Haiti: Pat Robertson and the Curse of Unyielding Ignorance

By Matt Recla

…lation of Haiti is somewhere around thirty percent. In Port-au-Prince that number jumps to almost forty percent. The majority of these churches are Pentecostal. These churches are overwhelmingly independent, indigenous Haitian entities, though some are linked to North American denominational Pentecostal churches. Haiti, along with Jamaica and Puerto Rico, is home to one of the fastest growing Pentecostal populations in the Caribbean. As I watch th…

Angry Voters, Right-Wing Populism, & Racial Violence: People of Faith Can Help Break the Linkages

By Chip Berlet

…it is much broader than what we faced in the 1980s. It crosses economic, class, race, and geographic boundaries. The challenge we face is that populist sentiment can go either way, toward right-wing regressive and potentially racist forms of populism; or toward a more progressive movement. That’s the dilemma on the table right now.” There’s Something Happening Here We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist rebellions…