Religion Dispatches
…flict is in the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence. His personality won’t allow him any compromise or agreement. It doesn’t matter what kind of resistance he will meet, what price he will pay. His existence is one of perpetual war. The Arab citizens’ goal is to destroy us. They don’t deny that they want to destroy us….
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…r Turner, Clifford Geertz, James Clifford, Sidney Mintz, Richard and Sally Price, Deleuze and Guattari, Stephan Palmié, John L. Jackson, Andrew Apter, and J. Lorand Matory, as well as many religious studies scholars who have questioned and refined “syncretism,” such as Bruce Lincoln, Charles Stewart, Rosalind Shaw, and A.J. Droge. The differences in the humanities now and then is at the heart of my critique of syncretism: Herskovits formed his the…
Read More…e economics. Godonomics is also a money-making system—and for the low, low price of $75.51, the Godonomics Platinum Package will teach you how to experience “the joys of both prosperity and wisdom.” Now we find an investment advisor named Sean Hyman pushing “The Biblical Money Code,” which claims that advice “woven” into Scripture has helped him go from earning $15,000 to giving away up to $50,000 a year. Unlike Hovind, Hyman is giving away his sy…
Read More…r in America usually have air conditioning, a car, a television, and a telephone.” These (alleged) facts must be a great comfort to the Americans struggling with joblessness and poverty. There is some decent advice about budgeting in Godonomics, but it’s undermined by all the howlers. Hovind believes, for example, that the Federal Reserve is a “privately owned bank,” that the term “social justice” has been hijacked by secret “Marxists” like Jim Wa…
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…spects seemed bleak, and I wanted to explore career options. I performed a number of tasks, including assisting in an embalming. Most of the time I was part of the funeral procession. So what did the Ride of Silence have in common with funeral ritual? Funeral processions run red lights and stop signs. Cars straddle multiple lanes and command oncoming traffic to stop out of respect for the deceased and the mourners. The unique quality of the event…
Read More…y three times the survival rate of those in third. One would only use “raw numbers” if one was trying to make a point not supported by the numbers. In biblical patriarchy, the refrain of “women and children first” hides an agenda whereby the women are “first” only insofar as they keep their place which is subordinate to men. I wrote about the fallout when they don’t in my book, Evangelical Christian Women. And in Quiverfull, RD’s Kathryn Joyce sho…
Read More…ge at the idea that for so many of our youngest, getting a free or reduced-price breakfast or lunch at school is such a nutritional lifeline—literally. The people at Kellogg’s know all this, of course. The breakfast cereal giant (also the maker of Pringles, Cheez-It, Famous Amos, and other healthful treats) wants to tap into that compassion. And now they are doing it in a spectacular way, with a splashy campaign called Share the Power of Breakfast…
Read More…City tag.” He notes that anti-gay religious activists, while not large in number, are relatively vocal: Choi Chi-sum, general secretary of the conservative Christian group, the Society For Truth And Light, for example, has been given an increasingly prominent stage to present his views following Taiwan’s legislative change. His opinions on same-sex marriage, sexual minority anti-discrimination laws, and even the recent “controversy” over a homose…
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…stake tensions for incompatibilities or inherent opposition. I know a fair number of African Americans, Hispanics, and Muslims who once voted Republican. They no longer do—not because they disagree with the Republican Party, but because they feel it has no room for them. It seems opposed to their presence in America. A good number in the Muslim-majority world feel the same way about the place of Islam in the world: there is no room for it. It isn’…
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…te boundary. Before secular government enthusiasts get too excited by this number I would point out that, for a fair number of evangelicals, the worry is that the state will interfere with the church, not the other way around. Similarly, a little more than one in four White evangelicals said the federal government should declare Christianity the official religion of the United States. Far more (61%) said that Christianity should not be the officia…
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