Religion Dispatches
…any other name) a Reconstructionist? And as Gerson noted in his essay, the number of people who can be labeled in this way would “fit in a phone booth.” (Actually there are significantly more than he recognizes, but I take his point.) My point, though, is that this is the wrong question. Far more interesting, I think, is to look at the influence of Christian Reconstruction; how has it impacted the style of the conservative Christianity that makes…
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…church since the Protestant Reformation. That’s what we’re dealing with. X number of megablocks of Christianity, each with Y millions of Christians. Categories of Christianity zoom from the left onto Peter Wagner’s huge blue WLI classroom screen, bouncing slightly for effect as they hit the right edge of the screen before rebounding to center. There’s one little block of 20 million or so, explains Wagner, which includes Mormons and Jehovah’s Witne…
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…ential material,” said Mpofu. “Oh yeah,” echoes Bourland. “In my heart, I just begin to pray, God, let this woman rise to this place that you want her to go,” said Mpofu. “Number one, she’s a Christian. Number two, she’s a woman.” Watch a short video montage of the conference here. —Ed….
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…he early afternoon, cameras in hand. It is not uncommon for tourists to outnumber monks in the debate courtyards during this time. This is obviously disruptive, making a spectacle out of a serious educational pursuit. Monastic response to the Chinese government policy of limiting monastic enrollments is at least in part the result of a clash between the secular, materialist, security-concerned worldview of the Chinese state, and the religious, tra…
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…tails ties to the Reichsbürger milieu. Experts attribute the stark rise in numbers to a heightened awareness and the agencies’ attempts to reduce the number of unreported cases. The conservative Minister of the interior of the previous Merkel administration, Horst Seehofer, had always refused to conduct a study of right-wing sentiments in the police and military, in spite of the warnings of social scientists who urged him to commission one. For ye…
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…that number seems staggeringly high. A full third? Once you delve into the numbers, though, 34% doesn’t seem quite so high. Really, Pew has asked an excellent question—a question that reveals the full tangle of ambiguities and inconsistencies that surround the topic of Jewish identity. First, some background: when the researchers at Pew set out to conduct this survey, they quickly ran into a problem that’s been under discussion for at least two th…
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…nked rather than serve an in-school suspension. But school policy was that students could only be spanked by employees of the same sex. So superintendent Michael Kelley had the school board revise the policy so that male teachers can paddle female students. (Other reforms included requiring a same-sex staff member to be present during punishment and a maximum of one parent-requested paddling per semester). Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucien Greave…
Read More…not exist in America for a purpose, because we are a Christian nation.” A student in North Carolina has been suspended from school after repeatedly attending in full pirate regalia. The student claims the pirate gear is part of his Pastafarian religion. A Catholic bishop in Chicago had his online identity stolen by email scammers. The scammers used the Bishop Joseph Perry’s email address and a fake Facebook page in his name to scam victims out of…
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…cralizes marriage as an ordinance necessary to salvation. In August, a BYU student named Cary Crall who had half-heartedly participated in the Yes on 8 campaign read Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling in Perry vs. Schwarzenegger, noting especially the failure of Proposition 8 proponents to mount evidence in support of their claims that gay and lesbian civil equality threatened religious freedom, child welfare, and “traditional” family life. Crall wrote…
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…d school disciplinary procedures,” making it a “hate crime to discipline a student for misbehavior if a student has a particular skin color or ethnic identity.” She called this “an attack on order, on discipline, on our ability to judge right from wrong, social from anti-social behavior. Our children need order to learn.” Not only is this narrative false—it highlights the Right’s fixation on authoritarian, punitive models of discipline and control…
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