Religion Dispatches
…ation unasked and without condition…Was there ever a more terrible and disastrous instance of Christianizing the world than this? It’s regrettable, I think, that “cheap grace” has turned into a kind of meme that Rod Dreher can toss into his debate with Andrew Sullivan without any reference to the context in which Bonhoeffer coined the term. The Gestapo didn’t hang Dietrich Bonhoeffer in April 1945 because he had taken a stand for sexual abstinenc…
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…and other materials in order to get the blessings. I know that will seem distasteful and a caricature to some, but these events are well-attended, and at a hundred bucks a person, revenues from book and DVD sales. Conferences and meetings like Lou Engles’ The Call are not just prayer meetings, they are Christian marketplaces, with all sorts of spiritual wares being sold. As to the political interaction, all of these groups know they don’t have the…
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…be sure, the data isn’t based on a random sample size and therefore isn’t statistically representative. The number of individuals reporting victimization in Episcopal spaces is alarming nonetheless. However, I would argue the data is more likely to under- than to overestimate the scope of the abuse that occurs. To see why, the survey results must be interpreted in light of the Episcopal Church’s larger culture of inaction around sexual violence….
Read More…y. Anyway, this Bloomberg piece on power players eschewing the use of cell phones strikes me as of a piece with my executive’s perspective. Technology is for the people who work for you. The article literally discusses someone getting Third-World peasants to loan her a cell in a pinch. You don’t get much more entitled than that. Still, there is something to be said for the virtues of unhooking from technology. I sometimes wonder if the convenience…
Read More…esidential candidate Newt Gingrich spoke to the Minnesota Family Council last night to stump for religious right support. By the end of the night, Gingrich sparkled, not from the glow of adoration—but with glitter. While signing books at the event, Gingrich was showered with glitter by an activist named Nick Espinosa. A video shows him shaking hands with Gingrich, then pulling a box of glitter, and then showering Newt and Callista with it. “Feel t…
Read More…ered little support. Now a seminarian seeking ordination as a Reformed Christian minister, this was the first time I had returned in more than 30 years. Speaking only in Spanish, the pope’s homily touched upon the damage native people suffered through the system of missions that Junipero Serra help found. “The Church, the holy People of God, treads the dust-laden paths of history, so often traversed by conflict, injustice and violence, in order to…
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…rences to gay marriage? Of course not, because that institution did not exist when this stuff was written. Yes, King David loved Jonathan “as his own soul,” but we don’t find their wedding in scripture. Instead, we get from scripture only David’s Amoris Laetitia—his joy of love. In the second chapter, Pope Francis notes that families have changed. Spouses now share more responsibilities. He hits on his oft-repeated belief that in a marriage person…
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…akers,” not plutocrats) in order to achieve national redemption. As Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Jeff Madrick, and many others are quick to say, imposing austerity on workers is the worst possible remedy. But this doesn’t mean that many middle-class and working-class Americans, including many who consider themselves free of any residual Puritanism, don’t buy into the new austerity. Obama’s response so far to Romney’s Austerity/Prosperity Gospel…
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…can tradition of religious groups acting as a counterbalance to the weight of consumerist culture. For those with less faith in the commercial model, the situation might seem a little grim. Siddhartha Gautama set out to eliminate desire. But perhaps desire’s greatest structural incarnation—the marketplace—will eliminate him. Thanks to Leah Schulson and Ethan McCurdy for contributing reporting from New York. Also on RD: Religious, Spiritual, and “N…
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…,” is rooted in the Reconstructionist conception of “American-ness.” Not just Christian, but their kind of Christian; one who would obey God, exercise “dominion authority,” and, most crucially, is one of their “brethren.” Titus, founder of Bachmann’s law school, happens to be the architect of a legal theory—as far outside of the legal mainstream as his Establishment Clause theory—that Obama is not a “natural-born citizen,” a designation that would…
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