Religion Dispatches
…w on the full palette of possibilities in their vision of end times religious war, since the indictment also said that the Hutaree’s enemies list includes “anyone who does not share their beliefs.”…
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…Greensboro Massacre, the Groveland Four, and Selma—a tragically incomplete list. White supremacy is a destructive and disintegrating form of power. The creation of the other is a symptom of existential estrangement—separation from the self, others, life and the ultimate divine source of being. The “demonic” is what prevents a person from realizing itself and the human gift of living a uniquely fulfilled life in community. We prove our infection by…
Read More…upports “illegal immigration” and “socialist health care;” in sum, “a socialist wish list.” After the Senate failed to break the Republican filibuster of the DREAM Act on Saturday, the UMC’s General Board of Church and Society put out the following statement from Bishop Minerva Carcaño of the Desert Southwest Conference: Though the Senate failed to supply the necessary leadership to provide humane and effective solutions to the badly broken immigr…
Read More…aid that the Bible only refers to God as “God,” Blue Letter Bible has this list of things that God is called in the Old Testament: Introduction El Shaddai (Lord God Almighty) El Elyon (The Most High God) Adonai (Lord, Master) Yahweh (Lord, Jehovah) Jehovah Nissi (The Lord My Banner) Jehovah-Raah (The Lord My Shepherd) Jehovah Rapha (The Lord That Heals) Jehovah Shammah (The Lord Is There) Jehovah Tsidkenu (The Lord Our Righteousness) Jehovah Mekod…
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…men. Their race shaped their practice in ways different from white Spiritualists in the Northeast U.S. While many Spiritualists were abolitionists, their whiteness and white privilege was an ever-present part of their religious practice. American politics and society based their hierarchies in part on racial difference, but the spirits communicating with the Cercle Harmonique denied the ontology of race. Though many of their Spiritualist contempor…
Read More…ion reduction,” but Warren likens such rhetoric likening it to Schindler’s List: an attempt to save some lives but not end a “holocaust.” In the world of the “broader agenda” evangelicals, when liberals advocate for gay marriage, they’re stoking the culture wars; when a “broader agenda” evangelical crusades against it, he’s merely upholding biblical standards. In that tradition, Warren in October implored his followers to vote for Proposition 8 be…
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…f. These are the teachers of tomorrow’s clergy. A hymn at my the fundamentalist church of my childhood included the lyrics, “He [Jesus at the crucifixion] could have called 10,000 angels, instead He died alone for you and me.” He could have called 10,000 angels, but instead he called 10,000 religion scholars. (And let’s not start a Twelve Days of Christmas cascading laundry list here, or this essay will never end.) The numbers tell the story. The…
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…s own cards on the table: What is needed is neither the overweening rationalist atheism of a Dawkins nor the rarefied religious belief of an Eagleton but a theologically engaged atheism that resembles disappointed belief. Such atheism, only a semitone from faith, would be, like musical dissonance, the more acute for its proximity. It could give a brother’s account of belief, rather than treat it as some unwanted impoverished relative. It would be…
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…he block. Most had been there for hours, hoping to sign up for the present list. Millions of American families are struggling. One-quarter of families live below the poverty line or not far above it. More than a million families are at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure. Millions more carry debts that exceed their family net worth. Unemployment is rising and employers offering basic benefits like health care are shrinking. Nearly a quarter…
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…e nineteenth-century, of petroleum extraction and a peculiar form of revivalist, charismatic Christianity. Anderson’s film, which he directed and wrote for the screen (it’s very loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!) is a morality tale, suggesting how the pursuit of oil, and resulting riches, corrupts the human psyche. Environmental Studies scholar Brian Black has written extensively on the impact of petroleum production and consumptio…
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