Religion Dispatches
…upporting Israel Is ‘God’s Foreign Policy.’” Just last month, Christianity Today featured a review of Caitlin Carenen’s The Fervent Embrace, in which Wheaton College professor Gary Burge took issue with the author’s broad categorization of evangelicalism as unilaterally Zionist, noting that “It is frustrating to see ourselves summarized through the extreme voices of Jerry Falwell or Hal Lindsey—and today, Pat Robertson and John Hagee. Evangelicals…
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…lity, but a dive into progressive dreams about what the world ought to be. Today’s media marketplace was constructed on a scaffold of adventures, role-played in the depths of the night, fueled by pizza, soda, and dreams. Today’s videogames are the highest grossing entertainment medium in the world, and they are the direct descendants of D&D. These digital worlds populated by monsters and magic were made possible by The Monster Manual. That volume,…
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…of the land, even he had to admit something in America was now different. Today, regardless of which side wins, history will be made. Forty-five years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. hoped that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Isn’t that what every religion seeks—a time when the service and character of each individual is recognized…
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…ch. We are the Church.” While a single example, this statement reminds us, today, on World AIDS Day 2008, that throughout its history, AIDS/HIV has been entangled with religion—for good and ill. As we move into the second quarter century of the pandemic, this entanglement continues. Twenty-first century religion has been shaped by and has shaped the AIDS/HIV crisis; they continue to shape one another. Today, we often hear about this entanglement i…
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…ch. We are the Church.” While a single example, this statement reminds us, today, on World AIDS Day 2008, that throughout its history, AIDS/HIV has been entangled with religion—for good and ill. As we move into the second quarter-century of the pandemic, this entanglement continues. Twenty-first century religion has been shaped by and has shaped the AIDS/HIV crisis; they continue to influence one another. Today, we often hear about this entangleme…
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…t a book to be engaged with. My goal is to help people find their bearings today without religion or God. What alternate title would you give the book? Finding our Bearings without Religion. How do you feel about the cover? It exudes energy and commands attention. An earlier version, also striking, put the reader into nature. I like my publisher’s taste, which was to make the book as current as possible. Is there a book out there you wish you had…
Read More…nfamous kill-the-gays bill has been reintroduced in Parliament. The bill stalled last year in the face of international pressure, including condemnation from the U.S. State Department, but its backers have never given up. The legislation and the violent anti-gay rhetoric promoted by its supporters have been part of a wave of anti-gay campaigns in Africa backed by American anti-gay evangelicals. That campaign has had deadly consequences: just over…
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…financial doom while their futures were sold from the rich to the richer. Today, as we think about how commitments must be contemplated in the context of right and wrong, of earth and heaven, we know that those notes have no moral weight, that banks can’t and shouldn’t own the futures of people who work, and that it’s time for the bankers to abandon their claims on everyday people’s futures. I will leave it to another [on this day] to think about…
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…ke Azerrad’s were mostly confined to relatively fringe alt-right podcasts. Today, they’ve been so mainstreamed they’re comfortable announcing them on the plenary stage. “America is a gynocracy”—male supremacy Declaring that “America today is a gynocracy,” Azerrad claims that it’s ruled, along with the rest of the West, by a “feminine spirit which is at war with almost all traditional expressions of masculinity.” Furthermore, “what the regime hates…
Read More…Nazis in concentration camps during World War II,” an apparent prelude to today’s discourse.) Pierce notes that Deal Hudson, who helped the George W. Bush presidential campaign with outreach to Catholics, wrote a “prescient” 1995 piece in his magazine Crisis, “about a possible alliance between evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics.” Deal wasn’t the first, of course; Francis Schaeffer famously called for co-belligerence as well, and t…
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