Religion Dispatches
…ing more “conflicted Christians” to not only open their hearts but also to change their behavior—including voting. The son and grandson of ministers, Alston says religion is his family business: “My life is tied up in that culture.” Alston is the director of Auburn Media, a project of New York’s Auburn Seminary, which will be promoting the documentary this year along with a “Friends and Family Plan” campaign. Alston said he hopes to organize 500 c…
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…ery religion evolves. To what degree each is willing to claim language of “change” varies wildly, but they indeed transform themselves again and again, sometimes bending to include a multiplicity of voices, other times splintering. Our chapter contributors ranging from Islam to Roman Catholicism, Judaism and Mormonism all acknowledge the shifts and negotiations that occur within American religious traditions. Even for those whose rhetoric claims a…
Read More…protects the church from self-contradiction. But they might want to consider the possibility that they have a role to play, and that this pope may be preserved from error only if the church itself resists him. So get with the program, Francis. Don’t go all Jesus-like and seek radical change or you might find your collection plates a little empty. And that’s the crux of Francis’ challenge. The changes he is promoting, while actually quite modest, a…
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…interview. First, Pope Francis is a person who freely admits that he can change his ways. I admire that. Having been wrong more times than I can count, I understand a person who admits that while at the time s/he did what s/he thought was right, in retrospect it was dead wrong. Pope Francis acknowledges that when he was the provincial of the Jesuits in Buenos Aires his leadership style was authoritarian. He chalks it up to his youthfulness and c…
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…nk and file Catholics want a new Church, not just a new pope. We know that change is in the air because we put it there. Progressive Catholics all over the world are creating new forms of church since the old is so thoroughly discredited. No institution can withstand the onslaught of negative publicity that the Vatican earned over clergy sexual abuse and episcopal cover-ups without major changes. No hierarchy however fortified can hold out forever…
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…quiring skills and understanding how to adapt to and make sense of climate change. The ethical, normative, historical, and analytical skills that religious studies offer should indeed (and, I argue, must) be part of this future. However if many of those in religious studies are not systematically foregrounding and speaking to religion and nature/ecology interactions, let alone within the context of climate change, then we shouldn’t be surprised to…
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…n if the schools fail to toe the line—the likelihood of effecting positive change through external pressure is minimal. The Hawkins case at Wheaton may yet prove to be the exception to the rule, as a number of insiders are holding out hope that she will be reinstated. Perhaps there’s even a slight chance of a broader reversal. But whatever the outcome for Hawkins, the extent of the conservative crackdown on evangelical campuses is worth noting. On…
Read More…es a platform activists can use to create and manage petitions. On Monday, Change.org deleted a wildly inflammatory petition supporting the sodomy ban because it violated Change.org’s guidelines on hate speech. The petition included links to anti-gay materials from American religious right groups and leaders including Paul Cameron, the Traditional Values Coalition and MassResistance. Other anti-gay petitions were also taken down after they were c…
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…his audience to hope that the tragedy in Tucson would claim our hearts and change our collective behavior. In his words: I believe we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved lives here—they help me believe we may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are no…
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…nited States is due largely to how white America views change: If it deems change as a threat to power and privilege, it will use any means at its disposal to undermine that change. For example, laws and racial violence in the South after Reconstruction were meant to eliminate the political clout and enfranchisement of newly freed blacks. Similarly, the Asian Exclusion Act was meant to undermine the economic growth of Japanese and Chinese American…
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