Religion Dispatches
…ide epidemic of rising medical costs, disparate levels of care and growing numbers of uninsured or underinsured Americans,” the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy recently reported. “You’re describing the perfect storm,” Neil Calman, CEO of the Bronx, New York-based Institute for Family Health, a speaker at the event, responded to an audience member’s comment: “People are going to find the situation will get increasingly worse and go…
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…of fertilizers and pesticides on a massive scale that seep down into the ground water. I believe that to be is to be connected. Until we start thinking relationally, we can’t adequately address the problems that we face. The difficulty, at least of the last decade or so, is the prevalence of an oppositional ideology in a relational world. If this continues, the consequences will be disastrous. It’s interesting, as I read After God, I’m reminded o…
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…cost of true discipleship. The price it was called upon to pay was all too cheap…We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale; we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition…Was there ever a more terrible and disastrous instance of Christianizing the world than this? It’s regrettable, I think, that “cheap grace” has turned into a kind of meme that Rod Dreher can toss into his debate with Andrew Sullivan without…
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…ed, applies here. These exchanges are neither surprising nor particularly groundbreaking. As Justice Breyer rightly observed, religion was lurking just under the surface of Tuesday’s arguments. Many disputes in recent years have involved claims that employers who hold certain religious beliefs deserve exemptions from generally applicable laws, including nondiscrimination laws designed to protect LGBTQ people. The Court’s 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop…
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…ls out from the group, the defection looks lackluster. Soon-to-be released numbers sent to RD from the Public Religion Research Institute show that young evangelicals actually support Trump more than evangelicals over 50 do. Furthermore, if evangelical stronghold Liberty University is any indication, Trump can count on college-educated young evangelicals on November 8th as well. Since president of Liberty University, Jerry Falwell, Jr., endorsed h…
Read More…equivalent of padding their giving dollars by including gym memberships, classes, some social gatherings, etc. Point is, if you label as “generosity” the money we give to maintain structures that in turn directly nourish us, we’re talking about a qualified notion of generosity. At least I hope we are. There may well be a correlation between engagement with the Bible and giving to charity but this study won’t get you there since it probably reveal…
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…utives professed to uphold and the reality she experienced at work was the last straw. “Right there I started praying for the Lord to expose these things in Wal-Mart.” Not Supposed to Live in Poverty Kim Bobo of Interfaith Worker Justice, who has worked for some 25 years as an advocate for workers within religious communities, told RD that one of the top questions she’s heard over her career is about Wal-Mart. “People understand that the way Wal-M…
Read More“Excuse me sir, are you Jewish?” For years, even the most vaguely semitic-looking man walking the streets of hipster (North) Williamsburg couldn’t avoid the question from one of the young Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men posted at the streetcorners. I have curly hair. I got it often. Now the Chabad have turned it up a notch with “Unite the Beards,” a slick and schlocky video campaign designed to show hipsters that hey, we all have beards… so maybe we’r…
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…as a Master’s student at Fuller working the switchboard part-time, and the number one phone call that came through went something like this: “Can you connect me to C. Peter Wagner’s Church Growth Institute? I’d like to buy some materials.” No one was happier than I was when he retired from Fuller and moved to Colorado Springs! I felt like I worked at a catalog call-in center. Seriously. I would never have expected to be talking about Wagner in con…
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…the Anglican Communion to consecrate an openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson. Last year, however, Bishop Robinson inexplicably told LGBTQ+ Episcopalians, incensed that the denomination had invited noted-homophobe Max Lucado to preach from the Episcopal-run National Cathedral, that “we’ve won.” A month later, The Episcopal Church responded to a Vatican decree prohibiting Roman Catholic priests from blessing same-sex unions by tweeting “The Episcopal C…
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