Religion Dispatches
…and protecting the institution known as negro slavery—the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits—a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slaveholding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by assoc…
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…certed “Zionist attack.” For those unclear that “Zionist” in some minds is code not for the problematically successful movement toward Jewish self-determination, but rather for the fabled machinations of the Elders of Zion, the speaker continued: “They do not want the church. They are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers.” Babini has since denied ownership of these words (though the Guardian noted his leg…
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…red to vote there.” Publishers Watching, But Are They Listening? While the code language in the science standards may be vague enough that perhaps writers like Miller can use them to their advantage, the social studies requirements are another story. Many warn that as goes Texas, so goes the nation, since publishers writing textbooks to adhere to Texas’ standards would sell the same or similar versions to other states as well. In response, People…
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…0% in this past year—unfortunately coinciding with the tenure of the first African-American president in US history. When Chip Berlet, one of this country’s best monitors of right-wing extremism, warned in a perceptive essay last week on RD that the hostile right-wing political climate in this country has created the groundwork for a demonic new form of violence and terrorism, I fear that he is correct. Christian Warrior, Sacred Battle Though thes…
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…to make sure this predator was not around children. No one challenged the code of deference to those higher up and obedience to the rule of secrecy. Now we have “the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in Church history,” declares the National Catholic Reporter in an editorial. The New York Times, which broke the story of abuse at the deaf school in Wisconsin, quotes a priest in Berlin as saying the crisis is “the worst in 100 yea…
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…ustice, immigration, and the environment). Instead they support NIF, which promotes on-the-ground change. But the attack by Im Tirtzu signals an end to business as usual. Following the Money Im Tirtzu calls itself a centrist organization that wants to strengthen political Zionism. But according to an investigative report by Ha’aretz, the movement is funded by right-wing groups and individuals, including John Hagee, the controversial Texas minister…
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…call-and-response dynamic that has animated black Pentecostal churches and Southern white revival meetings for generations. On October 25, 1974, as on most Friday nights, Abba’s house band Hebron churned out folk-rock worship music, original tunes that gene-spliced David Crosby and King Crimson—a progressive take on what would come to be known as Christian Contemporary Music (CCM). Someone spoke in tongues; someone else prayed for the gift of inte…
Read More…they forgot to mention that concept in the one document that outlines the code by which this nation would be governed. In the article, Dunbar outlines a proposed legal strategy to defend linking the two documents: Dunbar began the lecture by discussing a national day of thanksgiving that Gen. George Washington called for after the defeat of the British at Saratoga in 1777—showing, in her reckoning, a religious base in the thinking of the country’…
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…art of a discussion of workers’ rights, or to include Maimonides’ medieval code in a discussion of the death penalty, or to quote from the writings of twentieth-century Orthodox Rabbinical jurists to make a point about trying minors as adults. So what does this all mean? I would like to suggest that this marks the third stage in an evolution from a desacralized language of social justice to the current reclamation of the language of tradition. In…
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…conveyed this view in a very concise and pithy manner. The idea was first promoted by Christians. In 1853 Lord Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley-Cooper) wrote that Palestine was ‘‘a country without a nation’’ in search of ‘‘a nation without a country.’’ He made this observation during the Crimean War, when the continued viability of the Ottoman Empire came into question. With the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, continued Turkish rule in Palestine came…
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