Religion Dispatches
…gelical devotional diet movements that first cropped up in the late 1950s. Promoting the belief that inner goodness was apparent in one’s outer aspect, this vein of devotion was built on the doctrine that “fat was sin.” A thin, firm, beautiful body, it was believed, was the visible reflection of goodness and godliness. The idea that “fit bodies… signify fitter souls” permeates the American consciousness with anxiety about the body while shaping b…
Read MoreChristianity Today has put its two cents in on the “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda, telling gays and lesbians to unwad their knickers over the law and instead exercise “patience as Ugandan leaders sort out among themselves the best way to preserve their culture’s sexual mores.” Instead of strongly condemning this legislation, which President Barack Obama has called “odious,” CT tells us we need to understand the culture and give the Ugandans a fai…
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…n I read Kamesh Sankaran’s “The Humbling of a Proud Hindu” in Christianity Today, which mixed a genuine spiritual journey with the idea that Christianity is superior to Hinduism. This sort of triumphalism among Christians—particularly converts—is nothing new, but it also hides the realities many Hindus living under Christian contexts face. For example, in southern India, where Sankaran (and my parents) hails from, many poor Hindus couldn’t receive…
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…re for all who strive for it. Never mind the Republican Party’s efforts to promote McCarthyist laws that restrict discussions of the history of racism and other supposedly “divisive concepts” in America schools; or its leadership’s denigrating characterizations of political leaders of color with whom they disagree. And who here really cares that the Republican Party has championed voter suppression and gerrymandering that disproportionately affect…
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…blacks continues to shape the pervasive racism that structures our society today. As I read this brilliantly heart-breaking and challenging text, which is written in the form of a letter, it occurred to me that young women in the U.S. today (female youth of all ethnic, cultural, and racial backgrounds) need a similar book that explains through a mix of storytelling, history, and critical reflection how the misogynist religious/cultural legacies of…
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…ok suggests another story. In 2017 Shannon Nuszen, a former missionary who today works to counter Christian missionary activity in Israel, described the “gut wrenching feeling” she experienced at Evans’ Friends of Zion Museum. Geared towards a Christian Zionist audience, the museum’s exhibits featured coded appeals to missionary activity and celebrations of “deathbed evangelism,” where missionaries target lonely, vulnerable and impoverished Holoca…
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…bsorb ancient wisdom which, with a little imagination, is still applicable today. But some things the past cannot teach us and our task is to respond to the challenges of today and tomorrow. Reb Zalman is totally confident that we will be able to do so. He closes his afterword by saying, “And so when I’m saying I’m optimistic, I’m optimistic that something will emerge, you know. I’m as optimistic as I am when I see a newborn baby.” I wish I coul…
Read More…lded 50,200 hits at last check, and YouTube contains dozens of videos that promote the October 14 prophecy and speculates on its import—one asks believers to carry their cameras today to record proof of the visitation. Equally significant, mediums channeling different extraterrestrial beings have chimed in, claiming that they have received their own confirmations of this evening’s cosmic denouement. Not all the attention appears to have been good….
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…esn’t translate to why gay Christians want to be in same-sex relationships today. It’s not that Paul was backwards, ignorant or wrong, Paul just wasn’t even talking about gay people. What we are discussing today, then, is the marriage issue, so how do you begin to move conservatives toward accepting that? After my video was released there were those who said, “Even if you’re right and the Bible doesn’t talk about gay and lesbian people of today, w…
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…of utilitarian “rent-a-collar” approach that is common in movement circles today), but rather political and economic demands that are made on the basis of a moral foundation. It will take wrenching change to transform today’s labor movement. It requires us to think about the labor movement as a moral force in society, not just an economic actor. One of the key lessons from Sea-Tac is that the elements of this new social movement union are everywhe…
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