Religion Dispatches
…onference: The family today must confront, with creativity and a proactive spirit, the challenge of an individualist and mercantilist culture, based on production and consumption. Unfortunately, we have a mistaken concept of freedom, understood as an autonomy closed in on itself; other forms of cohabitation are privileged that obscure the value of the family, based on the marriage of one man and one woman. With this mistaken mentality, very often…
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…talk about developing a bulletproof faith—which has everything to do with spiritual survival. Yet one of the ways you talk about surviving is in understanding your own value. Then when someone comes at you, show them the dignity and respect they ought to be showing you. One could say we’re “forced into” living this way as a matter of survival, but the truth is we’ve gotten really good at it. I’ve seen us treat each other that way again and again…
Read More…rent traditions while standing before the world in unity. The “yes we can” spirit affirms a deeper unity amidst our diversity. The “yes we can” spirit includes women, African Americans and evangelicals. It includes the LBGT community, all parties in the Middle East, includes Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, employed and unemployed—the list is endless. What if the opening prayer at the inauguration were a call to recognize that we are all…
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…“Praise Bacon.” As the UCB’s membership drive reaches toward their goal of 100,000 members by 2020, Prophet John declares they will “continue with the philosophy of fighting fundamentalists of ANY religion.” Heather Henderson, Bacon High Priestess, concurs with Prophet John’s assessment. “We are not dogmatic about our stupid rules. The benefits of becoming a member of the United Church of Bacon are joining the 13,000 members who support our 9 Bac…
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…ing companions,” “co-responsible in mission,” and “common obedience to the Spirit” bear little resemblance to reality. Such spiritualized, stylized, not to say slippery, phrases make for wonderful copy. But they bear no resemblance to a church in which women are categorically prohibited from priesthood and therefore almost all decision-making; in which LGBTIQ+ people are seen as products of “gender ideology” and unfit for sacramental marriage and…
Read More…re. He has been uninvited for exhibiting a “proud, ungrateful and divisive spirit.” Since the decision was announced late last week, there has been a good bit of back and forth including hundreds of comments on Facebook, responses and press releases from the parties involved, and the release, by Ham, of a two-minute clip from a convention talk that he says is at issue. It seems Ham had been critical of one of the other speakers who is not a young…
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…ogate candidates’ religious beliefs. “The question is not whether personal spiritual beliefs shape a politician’s values and policies, but what spiritual beliefs mold those values and policies.” Indeed there may be times when it is legitimate to ask whether a candidate’s religious positions would have a direct impact on policy. Religious Right activist David Barton has declared that the Bible is opposed to progressive taxation, capital gains taxes…
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…, Annin & Company, more flags were sold in the ten days following September 11 than in the whole year before. Orders became backed up until midsummer of 2002. Wal-Mart reported selling 118,000 flags in a single day.” The event even inspired new designs, from the well-known “Flag of Honor” and “Flag of Heroes” featuring the names of the dead to the lesser-known “Thunder Flag,” or Flags specifically commemorating Flight 93, the attack on the Pentago…
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…quite intention. Madison Grant (the spokesman for “Nordic whiteness” in the 1910s and 1920s) discussed explicitly Jesus as “Nordic” as part of his attack upon immigration from Asia and Southern and Eastern Europe. Klan members of his age, likewise, linked the racial body of Jesus to their racial national view. Of course, other times, the imaging is unintentional or at least never spoken. When Mormons erected the Christus statue in the middle of th…
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…subsequent presence in Christ. I was not alone in such skewed thinking. Spirited Sunday morning worship services at the church I attended in southern New Jersey were almost always animated by the types of behaviors that most people associate with neo-Pentecostal, holiness, or some Baptist churches: vivacious hand clapping, foot-stomping, ecstatic exhalations, dancing, and tongue-speaking when the spirit was really high. One particular Sunday,…
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