Religion Dispatches
…that Christ will return May 21, 2011. The sign doesn’t say it, but the web site that it refers to let’s us know that Oct. 21, 2011 will be the day “when He will destroy the world and all that is therein.” At the end of the article, there is what may be the saddest quote I have ever read in a news story: Exley has bittersweet feelings about Camping’s prediction. “There are things I felt I always wanted to do—get married, have a kid, travel more,” s…
Read More
…same faith too. Some responded to the failed shari’a experiment in the opposite way that my playwright friend did. Groups like the Boko Haram, the now infamous Islamist sect that called for a fully Islamic state and turned violent in late 2009, sunk deeper into their ideologies. Perhaps shari’a had not gone far enough; that’s why things had not gotten better, they reasoned. Perhaps a full implementation of shari’a would mean the end of the corrupt…
Read More
…ndering if he was going to burn in Hell for eternity. Then he found my Web site and said it saved his life because he was to the point of despair.” Nate regularly fields inquiries from people caught up in violent family situations where narrow religious interpretations are used to justify control and abuse. While Rev. Sweeting worries about the children who hear the Phelps’ insults, and Nate Phelps is concerned for his nieces and nephews forced to…
Read More…ing in health care reform), he supports Roe v. Wade. From his campaign web site: Abortion While this decision should ultimately be made by the woman in consultation with her doctor, I believe we need to reduce the number of abortions in America. I believe government has the responsibility to regulate in this area and I support parental consent and notification requirements and I oppose partial birth abortion. I also believe there are people of goo…
Read More…Aga Khan. He is the head of a Shi’ah community known as the Isma’ilis, who officially have 15-20 million members worldwide. CNN’s 360º Blog ran two pieces: one by Zarifmo Aslamshoyeva and one by Reza Aslan; OnFaith had a piece by Eboo Patel. There was no other national coverage I could find, although local coverage was fairly good, such as this piece from a Houston Chronicle blog. Aslamshoyeva’s piece focused on the meaning of the Aga Khan as both…
Read More…ucation analyst for Focus on the Family, said on the recently launched Web site TrueTolerance.org. Cushman appeared on Anderson Cooper 360 Wednesday night on CNN, and tried to put a pretty face on their efforts, saying: “We absolutely think every child should be protected from bullying.” She went on to try to explain, and this is where I began to wonder if conservative Christians ever really listen to themselves when they speak—because she hit the…
Read More
…contributors. TGC council member Kevin DeYoung wrote an editorial for the site in 2020 advocating that Christians “strongly consider having more children than you think you can handle” as a “culture war strategy” to out-breed the non-religious. “The future belongs to the fecund,” DeYoung concluded. John Piper, a fellow TGC council member, has argued that the sexual abuse of women highlighted by the #MeToo movement is the result of Americans’ fail…
Read More…hout our history and we will strive to follow those morals,” reads its web site. Yet the military doesn’t seem sure whether Christian engraving on military equipment is a problem — or even what kind of problem it might be. In contrast, the New Zealand military has plans to remove the engravings and is reconsidering its contract with Trijicon, because “the lettering on the gunsights is fundamentally wrong, could be easily misconstrued and could ra…
Read More
…bers’ blogs that have cropped up since 2007, starting with SGM Survivors—a site where ex-members have shared numerous accounts of SGM’s cult-like atmosphere, including cover-ups of spousal abuse and sexual abuse of children as young as two. And in October 2012, three people whose stories were first shared on SGM Survivors formalized their complaints by becoming the first plaintiffs in the current class action lawsuit, charging the ministry and its…
Read More…begins another great Saw Doctors’ song, referring to the famous pilgrimage site where villagers saw the Virgin Mary in the late 19th century, and where pilgrims come from around the world to await miracles. Just last year, a Dublin man named Joe Coleman gathered hundreds of believers at Knock to await another apparition. “Can you tell me who the villains are?” the Saw Doctors go on to ask. The answer is obvious to an Irish band: self-proclaimed fa…
Read More