Religion Dispatches
…On the latest Bloggingheads, I probed the evangelical reaction to Louie Giglio’s withdrawal from the inaugural activities with Christian ethicist and author David Gushee. In this segment, we discuss whether how the incident played out will undermine Democrats’ outreach to evangelicals, and if so, whether it will even matter: You can watch the whole thing here….
Read More…ent once and for all is a terribly naïve way to read a very complicated text. Instead, one must be trained to actually read the Bible in a responsible manner – preferably, as Hauerwas states, within a community dedicated to taking the Bible seriously. As Jennifer Wright Knust writes in her latest book, Unprotected Texts, “The only way the Bible can be regarded as straightforward and simple is if no one bothers to read it. The Bible was not a colle…
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…al of Serbians from the province’s public institutions. The dispute is the latest in a series of escalations in the region which, though eerily reminiscent of the 1990s, have been widely overshadowed in the Western media by the war in Ukraine. Yet this is an oversight that could have dire consequences in the near future, as a second war, not entirely unrelated to the current war, threatens to break out in the heart of Europe. The lack of sufficien…
Read More…lash out and hurt somebody: Normally I would think we could ride out this latest wave of nativism and racism, but there are two factors that make it more dangerous than usual. The first, of course, is the economy which looks like it’s not going to recover smartly thus giving this impulse more oxygen than it might otherwise have. The second is that the right wing demagogues have an entire industry now devoted to creating and nurturing these wedge…
Read More…ceedingly difficult to say anything but ‘amen’ to the new atheists in this latest quest. On the other hand this move could backfire and spark ire among Catholics causing them to circle the wagons and dull their own criticism. It’s a fine line. The problem was caused by the inability for the Church to police itself adequately. While it’s preposterous to believe that any institution—whether it be the US financial services industry or the Catholic Ch…
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…, 29, now lives deep within the hearts of millions of people as one of the latest, though surely not to be the last, victims of Blue predation and surveillance that ducks behind the veneer of “protect and serve.” Raised by a single mother in Texas, I cherish the various roles an extended village played in making my rearing whole. Second only to my maternal grandfather, my late elder cousin Anthony Ruben, Sr.—a career Black police officer—played an…
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…tes were “importing” poor Jewish migrants to Christian Britain. The Jewish-coded monster who plots to colonize Britain with a demonic undead species now lurks, barely disguised, beneath a host of right-wing nightmares: the Right’s depictions of an omnipotent George Soros; QAnon’s talk of blood-drinking Democrats; and Herschel Walker’s recent bizarre reflections on the 1985 movie Fright Night—a rant that culminated in his comparing opponent Raphael…
Read MoreSocial psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in the latest Democracy: In 1943, Allied forces achieved a hard-fought victory in the North African campaign, captured Sicily, and began to fight their way up the Italian peninsula. Victories in places such as El-Alamein, Salerno, and Anzio gave America some confidence that the Allies would ultimately prevail in Europe. That confidence allowed the American public to shift more of its attention to the Pacific Th…
Read MoreOn the surface, Dan Gilgoff is right in his latest US News column to tout famous “ex-gay” Alan Chambers’ new interview with Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink as “striking.” But, when studied, the interview is simply more of the same from the “ex-gay” camp. What striking is that Chambers is not promoting so-called conversion therapy, which some religious conservatives claim can convert gays and lesbians to a straight sexual orientation. Rather, he…
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…e bishops, was just more than the delicate souls in Rome could stand. This latest mandate to reform the LCWR—indeed to put it out of business—has been in the works for years. In a process that began in 2008, the “doctrinal assessment,” as it is known, was aimed at investigating the “serious doctrinal problems which affect many in Consecrated Life.” In the face of wars in several parts of the world, ecological crises throughout the planet, and seve…
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