Religion Dispatches
…In their paper, Ho and his coauthors write that “visitors may decrease the number of incense sticks burned and period of stay at temples.” In my travels, I did visit temples that tried to suggest limits on how many incense sticks people should burn. Some temples have tried to deal with this problem by extinguishing incense sticks after they have been burning for a while. Particularly in Hong Kong, I sometimes saw large buckets of water standing ne…
Read More
…strated encounters seem unscripted and spontaneous. Along the way, they’ll sell us exaggerated, ridiculous personal narratives and spin data to serve their agendas. And, more earnestly, but in contrast to the observations of modern medical science, every single one of them, with the exception of Bernie Sanders, will affirm the belief that a first century Jew rose from the dead, after three days in the grave. This isn’t to belittle Christian theolo…
Read More…tarian operations in Uganda were already worth more than $2bn annually – a number which has doubtless grown – and they compete aggressively with secular NGOs to secure US government grants…. Evangelical groups’ close ties to Ugandan government leaders have cemented their influence in my country. Charismatic humanitarian pastors like Rick Warren and evangelical NGOs such as World Vision are increasingly invited to the official forums that help to s…
Read More
…and Lynn Vincent’s Heaven is For Real. Burpo’s book. A New York Times bestseller, is an accounting of his four-year old son Colton’s trip to heaven during emergency surgery (Thomas Nelson, 2010). Burpo’s book has become a burgeoning franchise, spawning follow-up popular theology books, children’s books, an iPad app with puzzles, coloring sheets, and digital postcards, a Facebook page that regularly generates new memes for the book—and even a movi…
Read More…ty in the ethnic cleansing of Croats and Bosniaks, it wasn’t a hard war to sell. But Kosova mattered more to Serbs, arguably, than Bosnia did, many seeing it as the spiritual homeland and national touchstone for their peoplehood. In 1389, some 610 years before that war—a number Muslims might identify with, for entirely unrelated reasons—Ottoman forces inflicted a massive defeat on the nascent Serbian state, making way for hundreds of years of Musl…
Read More
… No. Joe and I never once asked ourselves who would buy it or if it would sell. We focused only on producing the very best work we could, a work we were proud of, a work that spoke to us and hopefully would speak to others. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Give them pleasure? Piss them off? I am hoping they will wake up to the corporate forces arrayed against them, forces that if left unchecked will doom the future of their children. You…
Read More
…with the libertarian free market enthusiasms of developers who skillfully sell to buyers seeking escape from the Gomorrah of urban America. Nowhere is that more true than in Colorado Springs, which marries an activist grassroots religious conservatism, faith in (and reliance on) the military-industrial complex, and a historic western libertarian hatred of “big government”—combined with an economic reliance on big government. In a city sometimes r…
Read More
…ith Mitt Romney is that he wants the presidency so bad, he’d be willing to sell his soul to Beelzubub tomorrow to get it. Being booed was not a problem, especially since he can fundraise off the booing. What the NAACP speech firmly solidified is that Mitt Romney is the most wooden Republican candidate ever—and it’s not because he was booed. Simply put, Romney does not have a testimony. What do I mean by testimony? Well, any good LDS or Pentecostal…
Read More
…rmons to dismiss the entire article as an anti-Mormon hit piece. Trying to sell a few magazines, Businessweek destroyed an opportunity for a serious discussion. That’s not what any of the sources consulted for the article would have wanted. Another lost opportunity was Winter’s failure to pursue with any insight or curiosity the question of what motivates Mormon enterprise. It’s not that Mormonism is just another form of prosperity gospel. The fai…
Read More
…varsity sports, or the spring musical. But Zach isn’t doing this to up the numbers. Some things are more important than being popular. Zach attends a church that has been very public about being open and affirming of GLBTQ Christians. If that church ever considered muting its commitment in the hopes of appealing to moderates, Zach would be out the door. Too much is at stake to play nicey-nice. Dr. Sally Tinker, the school counselor and student cou…
Read More