Religion Dispatches
…e government. Moreover, citizens are religiously obligated to defend themselves with guns, be it from, say, an intruder, or, more broadly, the “tyrannical” federal government. Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, which considers the National Rifle Association too tame, advocated such a position to me in a 2010 interview. After Charleston, Pratt blamed Emanuel AME Church’s pastor, the murdered Clementa Pinckney, for the massacr…
Read More…c, notes Bob Shine of New Ways Ministry, “but have insisted their case involves a civil matter, telling Marianas Variety, “We’re standing up for our right. . .It has nothing to do with the church or anything. It’s our right to marry the person we love, which is each other.” Africa: Catholic bishops meet to solidify ‘traditional’ views on family According to a report by Sandro Magister at Chiesa last Monday, five cardinals and 45 bishops from acros…
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She’s got everything delightful, she’s got everything I need, A breeze in the pines and the sun and bright moonlight, lazing in the sunshine yes indeed. ~ “Sugar Magnolia” My childhood home was equidistant between two of the Grateful Dead’s regular Bay Area venues: Berkeley’s Greek Theater and Oakland’s Kaiser Convention Center. When the Deadheads came to Berkeley, they camped in the parking lot behind my high school, and when they came to Oaklan…
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…lo, who for years was a sociology professor at Eastern University in Pennsylvania while traveling the world teaching and preaching, is the evangelical world’s Jon Stewart to Graham’s more reserved, buttoned-down David Letterman. He has no poker face, wears his heart on his lapel like a prom boutonniere, and is known to weep, spit, and/or sweat profusely while he preaches. (Maybe that makes him the DeVito to Graham’s DeNiro?) When Campolo came to p…
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…ide. It’s a young, creative church, with lots of artists and musicians involved. The founding pastors there wanted the building to be used by the community. They knew that they wouldn’t really have a lot of use for it, besides Sundays anyways. So they helped create that nonprofit and establish the basic mission, and then I got involved with it, to take it on and really build it from the ground up. It’s a great mixed model. The Abbey Arts (our nonp…
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…y make it easier for marginally religious people who once thought of themselves as Catholics, Protestants or members of another religious group to identify as religious ‘nones.’” As currently worded, the questions in other surveys assume that a respondent will identify as religious unless they explicitly opt out. The Pew study claims, and I believe correctly so, that by offering additional answer options up front, respondents feel a greater sense…
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…riends and family last July, it flopped. “We initially did not censor ourselves,” confessed Thomas after describing how players balked at their liberal use of four-letter words. This prompted the pair to create what they call a “theology of swearing.” “If something was a direct translation of something in the Hebrew or the Greek where the modern corollary would be a swear, we kept it,” explains Caleb. He cites the example of 1 Kings 18:27. “That p…
Read More…one later in life are small.” Very small, in fact, as Zuckerman notes: just five percent. (This post originally stated, erroneously, that Merino is at Pennsylvania State University, and that his paper was published in 2012. It has been corrected.)…
Read MoreMy favorite new website is All Dead Mormons Are Now Gay. It’s a simple game: enter the name of a dead Mormon, or the site will choose one for you, and with the click of a mouse, the deceased LDS member is instantly converted to homosexuality. Of course, this makes no sense, and is somewhat offensive. But then, so are the views of some (though not all) Mormons that the dead can be posthumously baptized – or at least given the offer of baptism (whi…
Read MoreA 2008 hidden-camera video of a perturbed Mitt Romney discussing Mormonism with an ultra-conservative Iowa talk radio host named Jan Mickelson started making the rounds again late last week, and now, according to Politico.com, it has gone “viral.” Prickly and irritated, Romney pushes back when Mickelson challenges him on his view of the end-times and whether Jesus Christ will reign from Jerusalem or a New Jerusalem in the Americas. “I understand…
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