Religion Dispatches
…damnation for things (like homosexuality) that millennials see as simply judgmental and unfair. If organized religion can’t renew itself from the inside, this new generation will switch to a new platform—even if they have to invent it for themselves….
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…ted States continues under the fraught leadership of Donald Trump, we find new iterations of the “Christian nation,” new connections and clashes between immigration bans, the religious right, and women’s rights. But if oppression relies on strange alliances, so does resistance. Sowing the seeds of liberation often entails looking back to the past and reaffirming elements of one’s own traditions, persons, and events that have been overlooked or wil…
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…rmines the clerical control that the Pope’s message is intent on securing. Users, Not Consumers New social media is defined primarily in contrast to not to print, but to broadcast media: radio, movies, television. Where the latter is characterized by passive reception of a message crafted outside the immediate experience of the audience, social media today is by its nature participatory, interactive, collaborative, distributive, and, importantly,…
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…onference,” Dr. Dorothee E. Benz, national representative of Methodists in New Directions (MIND) and a New York annual conference delegate to the 2016 General Conference, told RD. Dr. Benz echoes the sentiments of many who see the decision of these two BOOMs as signs of progress and something to be celebrated while they remain cautious about what progress will be made at General Conference. Many wonder whether schism is unavoidable. A more importa…
Read More…on. The problem seems to be his Pentecostal roots coupled with his lack of New Thought training. Pearson believes his inclusionist perspective to be consistent with New Thought teachings, however. Both affirm the radical, inclusive love of God and the divine potential within humanity. But, most importantly, if Christ Universal needs a leader with the proven charisma to lead a multimillion dollar religious empire and the stamina to endure criticism…
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…ence both prior to, and during, January 6, research he describes both in a new epilogue to the paperback edition of his book The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American, as well as in the new report. As Seidel put it during the February 9 webinar: “America is a shared idea. And Christian nationalism refuses to share. It excludes non-Christians and the wrong kind of Christians, as this report shows…. This is the choice we face as a…
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…rly culture and it continues to value freedom of enquiry, the discovery of new materials, and the promotion of novel points of view. What you sense most clearly at the Vatican Library is that popes come and go, as professors do, but books and the society of learning remain. We are all links in a chain, not just the men who claim an apostolic succession going back to Peter. The fact that this book is on display in that Library now is something for…
Read More…, environmentalists, policy specialists, and a Vodou priestess gathered in New Orleans to discuss new models of water management in Southern Louisiana. The symposium, which coincided with the seventh annual Anba Dlo Halloween festival, is important for a city under the constant threat of flooding. (Anba Dlo is a Haitian creole term meaning “beneath the waters.”) But the symposium was also important moment for Afro-Caribbean religions in America. F…
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…ning. What is news this time around is that rank and file Catholics want a new Church, not just a new pope. We know that change is in the air because we put it there. Progressive Catholics all over the world are creating new forms of church since the old is so thoroughly discredited. No institution can withstand the onslaught of negative publicity that the Vatican earned over clergy sexual abuse and episcopal cover-ups without major changes. No hi…
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…uote from a scholar to the effect that “Putin wanted to be the father of a new Russian nation, but he is the father of a new Ukrainian nation instead.” The same might be said for his hopes to sponsor a revived Russian church, and just possibly for his dreams to use American social divisions against themselves. Any religious body wanting to counteract “division, mistrust, hatred, and violence” just got handed the tools to do so, courtesy of Orthodo…
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