Religion Dispatches
…rent national candidacy, just seven years after he was outfoxed by Bush in South Carolina—saw many oddly confessional claims from McCain on subjects religious. “It wasn’t so much a rejection of the Episcopal Church,” McCain said in October 2007 of his move to the North Phoenix Baptist Church. “I came into that church, I sat down, I got the message of redemption and love and forgiveness, and it resonated with me. I found going to that church was be…
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…iting cover. “But, see, you live in San Francisco,” I told her. “I live in South Carolina. In San Fran that may be warm and inviting, here, that’s called porn.” The only good thing was that the font had changed to what it presently is on the book, making it look a bit more like a book about faith and not a whodunit. She agreed, grudgingly, to once again go back to the drawing board. The next pass was the steel gray background once again—minus the…
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…preaching in her father’s congregation as a very young girl in Charleston, South Carolina. Her experience in the church was atypical of an African American woman. She had never heard a woman preach, and even sensed what she later described as an “undercurrent of quiet opposition” from her own mother. Yet her father, a trained Presbyterian minister, encouraged his daughter on the piano and in the pulpit. At Talladega College she was the first stude…
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…ocially influential. The Bakkers even built a theme park, Heritage USA, in South Carolina that not only became one of the premier vacation spots in the nation, it also provided America with the image of the late Jerry Falwell sliding down a water slide while wearing his Sunday best. Unfortunately for their many devoted viewers, the Bakkers’ media reign came to an end in exactly a decade. In 1987 revelations of financial misappropriation and illici…
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…far more unstable world of human forms. Born Charles Richard Kelty Jr., in South Boston (in 1915, just like Merton), his parents were no artists. His father was an engineer and a machinist from New Jersey; he was arguably the most precocious of their four children. He was educated in public schools in Milton, Massachusetts, where by his own confession he acquired his lifelong taste for poetry. In other words, unlike Merton, he did not have art foi…
Read More…n of local churches and citizens and sits on Courthouse Square. A woman in South Carolina viciously killed a “devil dog” after it chewed up her Bible. A new study predicts that the world’s Muslim population will double in the next twenty years. An embattled mosque in Temecula, CA has been unanimously approved by the city council. While they opposed the Park51 Islamic center and mosque in Manhattan, the Anti-Defamation League is supporting other mo…
Read More…ips, like the religiously conservative Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, repealed their prohibitions against interracial dating. In 1989, the Southern Baptist convention passed a resolution on race in which they vowed to “repent of any past bigotry and pray for those who are still caught in its clutches.” The “debate” over interracial marriage, and the racism that undergirded its ban, did not end – but the conversation changed fr…
Read More…ance.” A dear friend of mine lost her son several years ago in Greenville, South Carolina. He was hit so hard by his assailant that his brain stem separated from his brain. He died in the hospital hours later. The last thing he heard was his attacker calling him “faggot.” He was only 20-years-old. His attacker spent only one year in jail and is currently out of jail and serving three years of probation. The passage this past week of a measure addi…
Read More…prayercast included FRC’s Tony Perkins, Republican Senators Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Sam Brownback of Kansas, Reps. Todd Akin (R-MO), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Randy Forbes (R-VA), and Mike McIntyre (D-NC); as well as Shirley and James Dobson; Bishop Harry Jackson, who recently led an unsuccessful crusade against gay marriage in the District of Columbia; and Pastor Jim Garlow, a leading proponent of California’s Propos…
Read More…f Muslims in the world. Nikki Haley, Republican gubernatorial candidate in South Carolina, is now a Christian but of Sikh descent and still goes to temple with her family. Although she is referred to as a “raghead” by other Republicans, she is very comfortable in denouncing the characterization, without insulting other religions. Of course, the idea of wearing religious covering as a sign of respect is not new for politicians: both Laura Bush and…
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