Religion Dispatches
…the poverty line, according to newly released census figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968. And yet we’re told in Leviticus 25:35: “If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and are unable to support themselves among you, help them as you would a foreigner and stranger, so they can continue to live among you.” Deuteronomy 15:11 tells us: “There will always be poor people in th…
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…reminded of the daily Bible readings in my public grade school in the late 1960s and early 1970s—nearly a decade after such a practice theoretically had been ruled unconstitutional. News of that ruling apparently had not reached the teachers of my home room in small-town Oklahoma. They made sure to read just the appropriate parts, and not anything from the sacred scriptures that could force us to confront the time, place, or context from which th…
Read More…s only in the short run, that differences can be overcome; that a national spirit does indeed bind us together in spite of differences in politics, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and religion. This power is also evident in the collective disgust we all feel in the face of upcoming protests by members of the Topeka, Kansas, Westboro Baptist Church, who are promoting a radically different interpretation of the dead victims. Seventh, there is m…
Read More…Earth” isn’t exactly “In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” It’s downright weird, isn’t it? It’s almost as bad as “Brother Sun” or “Sister Moon,” or “Brothers Wind and Air.” Really? How about “Sister Water”? C’mon. Really? Really? No no, I can top that: “Brother Fire.” Best of all: “Sister Bodily Death.” Who comes up with this crap? Oh, wait. A major Christian saint came up with that crap (Hint: He died in Assisi). As a bon…
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…onals. This is a project at an early stage for Princeton University Press. The second is a history of atheism in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the period after the supposed “golden age of freethought” in the late nineteenth century. At this point I see the 1920s and 1930s as a watershed moment. Again, that’s quite preliminary. The third one is a reflection on the quest for perfection in American culture. I take this to have sign…
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…tourist attractions. New religious movements, such as Qigong and mind-body-spirit movements, have huge following. Chinese scholar Qiu Feng has called this religious renaissance the greatest social movement in China in the last thirty years; it has been attributed to many factors—the spiritual vacuum left by the loss of faith in Marxist ideology, increased materialism and consumerism, the strength and vitality of Chinese popular religion, and a ce…
Read More…zing in humility that “we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror” (1 Cor. 13:12). In other words, when it comes to policies and politics, we could be wrong. We must be ever mindful of the language we use and the spirit of our communication. Arrogance and boasting are indeed sins, and violent language can create a poisonous and dangerous public atmosphere. We must take care to not paint our political adversaries as our mortal enemies. (emphasis…
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…different from Mr. Obama’s SOTU… sort of. Just before he affirmed that the spirit of “civility,” the solution to our dangerous dissention, is the mark of American exceptionalism, he also turned the problem itself—“the noise and passions and rancor of our public debate”—into a mark of exceptionalism. The “contentious debates” are “a good thing,” because “That’s what a robust democracy demands. That’s what helps set us apart as a nation.” He reprise…
Read More…need for literary criticism or historical interpretation because the Holy Spirit of God spoke truth through the scriptures themselves. Furthermore, the Fundamentalists also held to Scottish Common Sense philosphy, a tradition that argued that facts were readily accessible to every person through common sense. To understand the Bible, all you needed to do was read it—no need to inject your own personal editorial comments. Pawlenty applies similar…
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…effect? It was with this ideas in mind that numerous studies throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s sought to determine whether religious practices such as prayer were healing forces whose efficacy could be verified through clinical trials and modern science. But, in 2006, the largest and most ambitious prayer study to date (led by the cardiologist Herbert Benson) indicated that patients who were prayed for (and were told about it, giving th…
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