Religion Dispatches
…s and coverage that oppose what most American women understand to be their best interests. In this difficult position, the best Ann Romney could do was emphasize the relational model to which political wives are so often tethered. I remember that Michelle Obama did it in 2008, describing the moment when Barack drove his baby daughter home from the hospital, so we women would see him as someone to trust. It’s a model that leads women to that close,…
Read More…truce, let alone a real peace,” he writes, but his evidence is flimsy, at best. After acknowledging the mounting evidence that the religious right is losing its monolithic hard-line political stance on a host of issues, Steinfels rightly recalls that what was called the “culture wars,” beginning in the late 1960s, at first did not center on issues of religion. He notes that the issues currently dominating US political debate have little or nothin…
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…ublic forgets quickly, which means that there’s little incentive to create best practice plans and mechanisms for reducing the scale of disasters, since by election time no one is likely to remember. “Voters reward the delivery of disaster relief, but not investments in disaster preparedness,” the authors bleakly conclude. The problem is that most of us see disaster, and disaster response, through a narrative of melodrama. Melodrama is known for e…
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…ere is no middle ground.” Each year, one or two of her students challenge evolution in her class. She doesn’t engage with them. Instead, she suggests they meet after class for a cup of coffee, so they can discuss their religious beliefs. The best hope, she suggested, is for evangelicals who embrace science to live well and lead by setting the best example. “Hopefully we can let some of those people see, wow, that person really is a Christian,” Epp…
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…join in reflection and worship as well as meet, coordinate and plan how we best share our testimonies with other people of faith around the nation.” Strider even insisted that the Democrats, unlike You Know Who, grasp that faith without works is dead; he writes that the real story of Charlotte is of a “party that lives what it preaches.” Well, yes and no. It’s a party that gives Elizabeth Warren a microphone even as it dispatches Rahm Emanuel to…
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…bad behavior, but an opportunity to express love. According to Dobson, the best chance to communicate comes after an episode where the parent has physically hurt the child: For this reason, parents should not dread or shrink back from confrontations with their children. These occasions should be anticipated as important events, because they provide the opportunity to convey verbal and nonverbal messages to the boy or girl that cannot be expressed…
Read More…, you’d know there really is something to this transition. Apparently, the best response is one of surrender. Well, then again, I guess some people would rather go kicking and screaming, trying to resist. Anyway, as I said, my point is about gender and death in the Qur’an. Death is an equal-opportunity supervisor, so every soul will taste it. No special taste on the basis of gender. Thank you very much. We know from the Qur’an that there are two a…
Read More…ited for Israel and other Christian Zionist groups “the Jews’ and Israel’s best friends in the world,” also tried to blame liberals, not Messianic Jews, for challenges to Judaism. “For 40 years I have argued that Jews for Jesus pose little or no danger to Jewish survival,” Prager wrote. “We Jews should be preoccupied with all the Jews for Nothing, the Jews for anti-Zionism, the Jews for radical Leftism.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again h…
Read More…After his death, students at his Ogden-area high school wore their Sunday best to school to remember him. A local United Church of Christ is donating the candles for the vigil. Organizer Marian Edmonds, pastor of City of Hope Church in Salt Lake City and organizer of the OUTReach resource center in Ogden, will staff a table at the event to recruit mentors to help work with LGBT young people to prevent suicide. And Mormons are volunteering to spe…
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…now is this: how can we wage this battle even more effectively? How can we best shield ourselves from the inevitable onslaughts of predatory journalists, readers, and politicians who prefer “fake news” over evidence-based, critical discussions on religion and society? How can we more fully reap the rewards of living dangerously? It is not about policing our tone or maintaining respectability. On the contrary, I beg public intellectuals: do not san…
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