Religion Dispatches
…ding up to this year’s election.“ (For more on Pray the Vote, go here) The promo for Craig Detweiler’s new book Into the Dark reads: “Detweiler, a well-respected film expert and media spokesperson on Hollywood and Christianity, examines forty-five twenty-first-century films that resonate theologically—from The Lord of the Rings trilogy to Little Miss Sunshine—offering groundbreaking insight into their scriptural connections and theological applica…
Read More…ing that Obama should be impeached because he is a Muslim (complete with a promo promising free guns, paid for by “a millionaire” who wants you “protected against what’s coming.”) The video in the email is by evangelist Jack van Impe, known for his premillennial rapture theology and his disconnected rambling in Bible verses. It is entitled “President Obama’s Religion in Question” and argues that he is really a Muslim. Joan, who claims in an email…
Read More…l like scum and ashamed of who we are, we turn to things that make us feel better—drugs and alcohol perhaps. Being rejected by family, church and society can bring on depression or violence in acting out our frustrations. Early death, though, for our community can be caused by any of these problems … and sometimes violence from those outside our community who believe the world would be a better place without us. So, no, LGBT people are not addicte…
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…inciple that imagining creates reality has captivated modern readers,” the promo copy explains. The publisher probably didn’t expect the book to resonate quite so uncomfortably with the political moment when they chose November 8th—Election Day—as its publication date. But indeed, Donald Trump’s distinctive style has roots in the spiritual tradition of which At Your Command and The Secret are both a part. Neville was just ahead of his time. Born i…
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…a sea of mental illness. On top of this, women in America are alternating between relief at the outing of sexual harassers in the #MeToo movement, rage at the patriarchal thinking that enabled the problem in the first place, and worry about the inevitable backlash. And American religious institutions have their own miserable reckonings to contend with. When Boston’s Cardinal Law died this week, victims of clergy abuse expressed both relief that o…
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…ies of the new LDS Church Handbook of Instructions, a two-volume, 400-page tome detailing Church doctrines, policies, and procedures (call it a Mormon Talmud) previously reserved only for local and regional Church leaders had been leaked on the Internet days before its official release at a special Saturday meeting satellite-broadcast from Church headquarters in Salt Lake City. Before last week, in a whole lifetime of Mormonism, I can only remembe…
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…d engaging evidence to enrich their own understanding and make their ideas better. Dhondup is part of a project several colleagues and I have recently embarked on. The Dalai Lama asked that our university lead an effort to develop a comprehensive science curriculum that over the next 5-10 years would eventually be taught to all the thousands of Tibetan monks and nuns in exile in India. In the pilot we just completed, several professors and graduat…
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…ng his lid): You can make reasons but God can’t. You’re saying that you’re better than God??? Which is, of course, not at all what Dawkins was saying. And then to underscore the farce: Colbert (pointing his finger aggressively at Dawkins): “Those are your words, sir.” Which, of course, they weren’t. But Dawkins was not to be outdone by this impressive (if dubious) Colbertian logic. “Where’s the evidence for God?” he asked, laying an empirical trap…
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…hit, The Power. This book is the follow-up to The Secret, a small, glossy tome that has sold by the wagon-load all over the world. It’s been translated into 46 languages. In The Secret, Byrne ‘revealed’ the law of attraction. Now read The Power, she urges, and you’ll be, well, more empowered. I was tempted to mock. Surely the second book is just cashing in on the first, in a cynical way demonstrating the law of attraction, which might be partiall…
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…-sex marriage. In that scholarly tome, Gorsuch embraced Finnis’s view that promoting personal autonomy is an insufficient reason for government to permit what it might reasonably regard as poor choices, including assisted suicide. One key passage finds Gorsuch drawing an analogy that is, quite literally, paternalistic: Ruling out a ‘bad choice’ does not necessarily evince disrespect for the chooser, but for the choice he or she made; after all, pa…
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