Religion Dispatches
…can easily demarcate their membership—it’s the people who look like us, or talk like us, or dress like us. Tribes organized around religious belief have rituals, sacred texts, and physical spaces that all serve to bind the participants together. Atheism has none of these things—most of the time it’s an individual choice, made and kept alone. In my piece, I point out how even Democrats still resort to appeals to faith, but: The religious right has…
Read More…ources over here, especially to the churches. We hope to stand alongside the believers of Uganda during this time of crisis. Talk about blood money….
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…at largely happened through innovation, including the Christian television talk show format, which Bakker pioneered with Pat Robertson at the Christian Broadcasting Network in the 1960s, PTL’s private satellite network, launched in 1978, a year before ESPN, and the theme park, Heritage USA. The Bakkers signature television show, the PTL Club, was broadcast live, five days a week, with little scripting. Tammy once did an episode on a merry-go-round…
Read More…ish, churchy taboos and understands millennial culture. “Mars Hill members talk about sex, drink alcohol, get tattoos, and swear,” said Bitch magazine. “They listen to Fleet Foxes; they love Star Wars and graffiti art.” The Seattle Times said, “He drew pierced-and-tattooed congregants from Seattle to … Calvinist doctrine cloaked in indie-rock, big screens and a worn pair of Chuck Taylors.” But none of this makes for the kind of epoch-shifting post…
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…e words from David Brooks’ May 5 column to give him pause: The Republicans talk more about the market than about society, more about income than quality of life. They celebrate capitalism, which is a means, and are inarticulate about the good life, which is the end. They take things like tax cuts, which are tactics that are good in some circumstances, and elevate them to holy principle, to be pursued in all circumstances. In Jay Richards’ worthles…
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…and of six successive chief executives—whereas faithy liberals in our era talk mainly to themselves. But there is also a telling and dolorous similarity between the two groups when it comes to people of color: enlightened whites of the 21st century continue to offer all sorts of ideas about “what needs to be done” for the sake of racial justice. But only rarely do they/we bother to sit with and learn from the main victims of racial oppression. No…
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…c Service Commission that she thought that while husbands and wives should talk about it, women should submit their vote to their husband, because to vote opposed would cancel each other’s vote out. Joyce informed me that Chancey also “spoke about her opposition to women’s voting in a film by the Gunn Brothers, winners of Vision Forum’s annual Christian film contest, The Monstrous Regiment of Women.” Vision Forum like other Christian Reconstructio…
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…don Review of Books contributor Sadakat Kadri whose new book might help us talk about Shari’ah. Heaven on Earth is the kind of book that can appeal to the curious, as well as the intellectually serious—that strange product which actually leaves you knowing more about Islam than you did before you started. Kadri’s book is smart, fun, wide-ranging, well researched, and remarkably thorough for its length, though I had, as you’ll see, several critici…
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