Religion Dispatches
…uld cause riots on the streets in big cities across America. According to OneNewsNow, the online news service of Donald Wildmons’ American Family Association, Corbin “contends there is potential for public riots the night of or after the election, if Obama’s lead in the polls does not translate into victory.” “I don’t think that’s something that we’ve looked at very closely, and I think that this could be a powder keg here as we get towards that d…
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…concerned with letting facts get in the way of a good narrative or pithy one-liner. Nowhere is this sloppiness clearer, ironically enough, than when Silverman discusses atheism. Just as Silverman relies on a caricature of religion as a malicious entity only capable of perpetuating evil, he renders atheism as big and pristine an entity as possible. Atheism is, in Silverman’s words, a “logically perfect position,” and it’s so universal that explici…
Read More…are, according to Pew, surprisingly high. Moreover, they represent a large number of people, “nearly equal the estimated number of religiously affiliated adults in the United States” Accordingly, the 1-plus % of the Chinese population that identifies itself as Muslim equals some 20.3 million people—a population almost as large as Saudi Arabia’s. (More to the point, as one of China’s ethnic minorities, Muslims are not bound to the one-child per fam…
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…etic, with his short blond hair curled at the top, he radiates a kind of kinetic energy. “Wow, you look fantastic!” I say. Then I catch myself. I wonder if I’m building some assumption about his sexuality into the way that I am speaking to him. Domen has built a whole new identity and career out of the idea that he is “ex-gay.” I worry that he’ll take offense. But he immediately puts me at ease. “Thank you for that incredible article!” he exclaims…
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…stream from Ferguson, and it was really a major shift for me because I had never done this kind of journalistic work before. But I had a couple of journalists from Reconciling Ministries Network who were there supporting my desire to cover what was happening on the ground. They understood that I didn’t want to simply capture what was happening but that I wanted to participate in what was happening and lend my support to the activists on the ground…
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…her siblings also messaged us to say that they were being harassed via telephone, in person, and social media… Why would this be such big news in Nigeria? I believe it is because the press still wants to vilify gay men and women. They want to show that the USA is a place that corrupts the morals of children and is a den of sin and iniquity. The current political election probably isn’t helping change that impression much. The mere thought of two m…
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…aeli Arabs and will most likely be taking up a minister’s portfolio in the new Netanyahu government, further emphasizes the survey’s dovish tilt. But an important question to ask is: what does it mean that so many American Jews support Obama’s stance, when that stance, to date, has been best described by observers as “enigmatic”? How well will these numbers hold up if Israel’s “most favored nation” status is truly challenged by an American adminis…
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…uares with findings of an earlier study by Anna Greenberg on religion in Generation Y.) In general, students participating in the Astins’ surveys showed a movement through the course of their undergraduate education toward a more holistic sense of spiritual practice less connected to traditional religious institutions, their liturgies, and other rituals. Feeding the poor, housing the homeless, tending the sick, and exploring other religious and ph…
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…s the WCF and its affiliated manifesto don’t represent voices in the wilderness, but draw a number of heavyweight Christian right groups, from the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, and Focus on the Family, who network with representatives from the Vatican, Mormon scholars, conservative evangelicals and Catholics from developing nations, and a few Muslim leaders seeking allies to fight gay and women’s ri…
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…ld until the 16th century, when European explorers arrived in India with a new religion and a new cosmology. The Earth, these visitors insisted, is not flat or disc-shaped, but is instead an enormous ball. This idea met with stiff resistance from the natives. There were problems. For example: Where in this universe was Mount Meru? On the surface of a sphere there is no central or special point for it to rest. Of course, the modern scientific idea…
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