Religion Dispatches
…scandal he couldn’t win the Republican primary for lieutenant governor in Georgia four years ago, claims the two are one and the same. He tells the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody that his new Faith and Freedom Coalition is like “a 21st century version of the Christian Coalition on steroids” and is a natural fit with the tea party movement: We have an awful lot of the tea party organizers who are active in faith and freedom and I thi…
Read More…and this version is nothing more than a person suit, a human veil. Perhaps Georgia—the heartbreaking murderer-of-the-week in episode 10—who cannot see faces, ironically witnessed the blankness of Lecter’s true face most clearly, even more so than Will’s vision of Lecter as a horned shadow in the final episode. His aestheticism and his sensuous curiosity know no moral boundaries, like Dorian Gray, but he doesn’t need a portrait in the attic: his fa…
Read More…n protest over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (the current troubles in Georgia offer a chilling parallel). The 1984 Los Angles games were also marred by a Soviet-led boycott, a boycott in which the Chinese dramatically refused to participate. And then came 1988. One of the most shocking, and risky, moments on those opening ceremonies was when five sets of parachutists dropped out of the sky in colored uniforms, creating an aerial version of th…
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…within evangelicalism, like the prominent Texas Republican, David Barton, promote the idea that America is slouching toward Gomorrah. America is God’s chosen republic, Barton asserts: the nation has been an explicitly Christian country from its earliest days and needs to reverse its sinful migration away from its biblical roots. Professional historians, by contrast (including leading evangelicals like Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, and George Marsden)…
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…ntified video is reminiscent of another video, of a mass infant baptism in Georgia, which also elicited controversy, predominately in Western Europe and North America. The Snopes article concludes, “…it’s clear that the baptismal practice depicted isn’t all that uncommon.” And that’s true. Millions of infants have been baptised this way over centuries (including me, by the way). What’s uncommon is for an infant to die, as was the case last week. S…
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…oard of governors and who participated in the former president’s call with Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, appears to be more certain than ever of the fraudulent claim that Donald Trump was cheated of re-election through voter fraud. In December 2020, she signed a letter from the Conservative Action Project calling for members of the Senate to “contest the electoral votes.” And she continues to press ahead with Republican-led eff…
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…in Europe and elsewhere have failed to internalize the democratic value of free speech. Jyllands-Posten, for its part, self-righteously claimed to be heroically rescuing free speech in the face of the fearful self-censorship practiced by Danish writers and artists with respect to criticism of Islam. The incident was portrayed as a clash between the liberal values of an open society and an anti-modern, authoritarian, and superstitious religion. In…
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…im of bad faith. The conflict over Bevin’s prayer initiative is a conflict between neoliberal, libertarian strands of American evangelicalism, where privilege is accorded to the individual— gifted with free will, deciding his or her own fate—and an American social gospel tradition heavily flavored by the Enlightenment rationality of the Founders, with attention to structures of power as both historically damaging and burdened by responsibilities,…
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…When you step out in clothing that boldly states your womanhood, you are a free woman. You are no longer a slave to old rules and notions. Modernity is inherently free. Therefore, burqas, veils, and headscarves are now off-limits. Women who appear in public wearing such clothing may be fined, arrested, and/or imprisoned. They may be prevented from attending schools and colleges, and from going to work. (We may make allowances for shoppers, though,…
Read More…oppression cannot be far behind. Conversely, if a God is disclosed who is free to come and go, free from and even against the regime, free to hear and even answer slave cries, free from all proper godness as defined by the empire, then it will bear decisively upon sociology because the freedom of God will surface in the brickyards and manifest itself as justice and compassion. That’s the God I know and love, one who provokes real change on behalf…
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