Religion Dispatches
…Economic Bill of Rights,” arguing that “Political tyranny was wiped out at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776….Since that struggle, however, man’s inventive genius released new forces in our land which reordered the lives of our people…Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.” And du…
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…narrative and encourages a celebration of Easter as “zombie Jesus day.” In Philadelphia, the hugely popular annual zombie walk (in which participants become decaying version of themselves and shamble the streets as zombies on parade) takes place on Easter weekend with specific references to the Christian holiday of the undead. You might assume that all of this zombie Jesus talk exists on the level of simplistic parody, barbs hurled at Christianity…
Read More…st, let me say I composed this entry starting from SFO airport en route to Philadelphia. This means I can no longer control formats and things like marking foreign words with italics. I think some people know that in my past life I was an academic. So things like format and italics make a difference. But I can’t get what I want with the Ipad, as far as word processing goes. That may be a blessing in disguise. I mean, I can always blame things that…
Read More…and it should be noted that it’s coming from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, so it could be impeded by higher-ups in the Justice Department—it would be a landmark moment as the federal government usurps the authority that Vatican has long claimed to police its internal affairs. And the nature of the investigation reported by the AP, which spans seven of the state’s eight dioceses, suggests just how deep such an inquiry could go. Accord…
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…om all over have been coming to aid in the efforts, including a group from Philadelphia that includes the pastor of Historic Mother Bethel AME church, Mark Tyler, and Rev. Dr. Leslie Callahan, Pastor of St. Paul Baptist Church. The presence of clergy members is a helpful counterbalance to local and state law enforcement presenting themselves as both religious and civic authority. The whole situation has me thinking a lot about Frederick Douglass’…
Read More…pularity of the TV show Will & Grace and the movies Brokeback Mountain and Philadelphia. It got even more absurd when Thompson tried to argue that religious groups were even becoming more accepting and tolerant: Chauncey has pointed out that the religious groups he (Thompson) cited—MCC, Unitarians, etc.—are not the majority of Christian groups. Chauncey: “There’s a growing debate [in religions], but most religious groups are not with us.” Thompson…
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…were mega churches with two to three thousand members each in New York and Philadelphia—not to mention affiliates across the Midwest, South, West Indies, and even South Africa. Israelite ideas were popular in the Holiness movement, and played an indispensable role in the evolution of Pentecosalism, the most numerous Christian movement of the twentieth century. I could find important antecedents in the Anglo-Israelite, who had representatives both…
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…possibility of placing children with same-sex parents, Bethany allowed its Philadelphia branch to change in order to retain access to public funding it had initially lost over its discriminatory policy in 2018. Subsequently, some other Bethany branches switched to LGBTQ-inclusive foster parent and adoption policies while others did not, resulting in a confusing patchwork that, as of early this year, has been replaced with a Bethany-wide policy of…
Read More…’t mean he should get out of the race. As many have argued, when we get to Philadelphia, Sanders can use his total delegate count to leverage changes in the party platform or nomination process. He could press for a $15/hour minimum wage plank, for example, or try to get the Democratic party to abandon closed primaries. He’ll have to be selective—he won’t be able to shoot the moon—but there’s every reason to think Sanders and his movement will be…
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…eligious narratives surfacing around the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Let’s turn now to a view from within the convention—specifically, at the women who carried the face of faith on the convention’s opening night. As has been widely noted, things got off to a rocky start. Rev. Cynthia Hale, pastor of Ray of Hope Christian Church in Decatur, Georgia got booed, loudly, for mentioning Hillary Clinton’s name in the opening prayer. I…
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