Religion Dispatches
…eal of trust exists between us. Just as we do not plagiarize, we honor the code of privacy and do not make public that which was meant to remain private. For me, that trust was broken in the midst of this passionate debate in a way that tells me we have crossed a line. Writing a Facebook wall comment in response to a May 3rd debate between Gordis and Peter Beinart at Columbia University, I referred to Rabbi Gordis as a “tribal fascist.” The tribal…
Read More…ther religious faiths, too.” (Like the Prime Minister using his office to promote his Christian faith.) But then Cameron reveals his politician’s circumspection, arguing on the one hand that advocates of “secular neutrality fail to grasp the consequences of that neutrality, or the role that faith can play in helping people to have a moral code.” That accusation is abruptly followed by the disclaimer that “[o]f course, faith is neither necessary n…
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…aren’t so much sober accusations of individuals’ crimes than an insiders’ code for ‘elite liberals.’ The Satanic abuse panic of the 1980s and 90s led to the persecution and false convictions of many innocent people and caused traumatic rifts in communities. The panic involved gothic stories of bloody ceremonies conducted by community-members in black robes, including graphic claims of child and adult sexual abuse and rumors of specific “cult” loc…
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…ion is standard among various factions of the Christian Right, but Wallnau promotes a unique and even more pernicious brand of NAR teachings on gender and sexuality, including the dangerous idea that LGBTQ-identifying kids need to be “delivered” from demons. As noted earlier, “deliverance” among NAR adherents is coded language for exorcism, which is an even more noxious version of the psychologically (and often physically) harmful practice of LGBT…
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…red at length in my book. First, Driscoll wrote a rebuttal in Christianity Today’s now defunct sister publication, Leadership Journal, to an article on the “homosexual question” by Brian McLaren, a vocal figure in what was then called the “emergent conversation.” Tellingly, evidence of Driscoll’s full response to McLaren has been scrubbed and edited (including, apparently, by Christianity Today), but I learned from early on in my research on Mars…
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…ough the whole book that one of the most serious temptations of the church today is to see itself as a separate planet. We have become accustomed to this with the Benedict Option, but that’s just one example. The clerical disease is at the heart of this temptation to recreate a world with the clergy in charge of everything. That is clearly a world that the vast majority of Catholics don’t live in. It could be the most serious backlash when Francis…
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…—in history as well as beyond it. Differences Among Progressive Christians Today Are there divisions among progressive Christians today? I don’t think so, but certainly there are important, substantive differences. To generalize boldly, there are two points of view. I will label them—facetiously, and in hopes of offending them equally—the “purists” and the “accommodators.” The purists appreciate all four antecedents of the current progressive Chri…
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…lowing: “the only offense for which Jews can be ‘excommunicated’ in the US today is not to participate in these efforts [to support Israel]. Intermarriage, ignorance of the Jewish heritage, or lack of faith do not keep anyone from leadership in the American Jewish community today. Being against Israel or apathetic in its support does.” Allowing Zionism to define its own terms One hears a variety of arguments about why opposing Zionism is illegitim…
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…s of the San Diego shooter and the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik. Today, the alt-right movement is structured around the basic idea behind cultural Marxism and its belief that patriarchal, white Western civilization is under attack by a cabal of “globalists” who have subverted traditional gender norms, sexuality, and other social values. Anti-Semitism Cultural Marxism theories have been stamped with anti-Semitism from the beginning. Willi…
Read More…rstanding of the interrelatedness of oppression. How do you jump and shout today after such tepid response yesterday? Time and again, members of the Black community have felt the brunt of angry white LGBTQ persons who have declared we are the reason such legislation as Prop 8 gets enacted. To counter, national LGBTQ agencies have even initiated strategies to increase Black allies in support of their work, especially state approval of same-sex marr…
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