Religion Dispatches
…further why even when so few Muslims do resort to violent actions, a good number of their co-religionists are reluctant to entirely dismiss them. Indeed, many more Muslims protested peacefully against “The Innocence of Muslims” than did violently, even though their numbers together were still incredibly small. In his introduction to Sufism for Non-Sufis?, University of Southern California Professor Sherman Jackson notes that we cannot separate Is…
Read More…Namibia. This makes Kazangula an important transportation node for the long-haul tractor-trailers that serve as the primary distribution network across sub-Saharan Africa. It is, in other words, an international crossroads. That phrase is dangerously misleading when applied to Kazangula. One thinks of Istanbul, for example, as the international crossroads of the East and West, of the Christian and Muslim worlds, and can immediately conjure up imag…
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…ory out. While only 29 percent of those polled said they would support same-sex marriage, those numbers shot up 14 percent if assurances were made that by law “no church or congregation would be required to perform marriages for gay couples.” Never mind that no church at this very moment is required to marry anyone, gay or straight; that simple assurance means that 43 percent of all adults and 60 percent of younger adults would suddenly support sa…
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…ondemnations of “justification by works” were condemnations of Jewish Jesus-followers who saw the special laws of Torah observance (Sabbath, dietary laws) in elitist and exclusivist terms, and who were trying to impose those laws on Gentile Jesus-followers as a condition for membership in the Christian community. Paul’s argument with them was that Gentiles did not need to turn themselves into Jews in order to enjoy divine favor. The death and resu…
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…e are no cliffhangers or clues, but an episode-by-episode autopsy of a dead-on-arrival corpse that represents more than a single body. “This is hardly an isolated phenomenon” Cosper notes, “Why do we keep doing this? Why are we regularly platforming people whose charisma outpaces their character and who leave devastation in their wake? Something attracts us, we buy in, and then we watch the collapse like spectators at a demolition derby. Understan…
Read More…“butter” of the usual “bread and butter” issues of the religious right—same-sex marriage—had slipped from the number two position drawing the concern of a paltry seven percent of “value voters.” Does this mean that there is a sudden uptick of support for marriage equality among “value voters”? No. It certainly doesn’t mean that. The event was rife with anti-gay rhetoric including panels on how acceptance of homosexuality will threaten that preciou…
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…than other demographics, but it’s still not a majority. A slightly higher number (35%) wanted to maintain the church-state boundary. Before secular government enthusiasts get too excited by this number I would point out that, for a fair number of evangelicals, the worry is that the state will interfere with the church, not the other way around. Similarly, a little more than one in four White evangelicals said the federal government should declare…
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…Actually, the Arabic of that popular misunderstanding says, “kullun ‘ala al-fitrah.” Everyone was born ‘ala al-Fitrah. The word “Muslim” does not occur in that statement. Al-Fitrah, according to the Qur’an, is a primordial predisposition toward faith. The commentators contend that it is also a primordial predisposition to surrender, which is another word for Islam. Unfortunately, this is then concluded to mean, “Every one was born in Islam,” or Mu…
Read More…are Spanish-speaking. Economic downtimes and anti-immigrant outcry go hand-in-hand in American history. And even though Utah has a 7% unemployment rate significantly lower than the national average, anti-immigrant sentiment is running strong in the Beehive State. With a bill modeled on Arizona’s SB 1070 under construction and headed for the legislature, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff recently called for the LDS Church to weigh in on the mat…
Read More…oject director Reverend Kapya Kaoma shows a direct connection between right-wing religious proselytizing on the continent and the rise of anti-gay measures: Kaoma argues that the US Right – once isolated in Africa for supporting pro-apartheid, white supremacist regimes – has successfully reinvented itself as the mainstream of US evangelicalism. Through their extensive communications networks in Africa, social welfare projects, Bible schools, and e…
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