Religion Dispatches
…hich are America’s best. We sold them to Egypt along with hundreds of our latest and greatest fighter jets because Egypt was controlled by Mubarak who was America’s friend. Can you imagine what Israel faces with Iran, Egypt, Syria, Turkey and Russia coming after them? The prophet Ezekiel clearly predicted this battle thousands of years ago and you are watching the players get into position with lightning speed. Jesus said: “When you see these…
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…es in response to Roe v. Wade just in time to elect Reagan, but rather the latest iteration of a religious debate that had been going on since the 1950s. Because that debate was as much about what these groups differed on as it was about what they had in common, the political alliance that emerged among them also reflected those internal divisions and disagreements. The Religious Right I show is loosely aligned, fraught with internal religious div…
Read More…dard magazine. Their entertaining, short posts and longer features use the latest research to examine conventional wisdom and to propose new ways of thinking about old or intractable problems… among other things. But, as one who’s often skeptical of the conclusions drawn from social science research—if not of the methodologies behind the research itself—I’m particularly disappointed to see misleading conclusions drawn from a PS post. I’ll explai…
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…white nationalism and Christian nationalism that have enjoyed more currency than ever among conservatives in the post-truth maelstrom of the age of Trump. Conservative interpretations of the New Testament like O’Reilly and Dugard’s Killing Jesuspromote white Christian nationalism. The sooner we recognize how prevalent these insidious forms of white nationalist biblical interpretation are in our churches, media, and political discourse, the sooner…
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…ere was the Republican outing of Barack Obama as a ‘secret Muslim’ and the promotion of this theory to both elderly Jews and conservative Christians. One survey, released in October, showed that at a sizable portion of the Texas voters polled actually believed Obama to be a Muslim. The other glaring example was the McCain campaign’s last-minute attempt to use Barack Obama’s friendship with Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi as evidence o…
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…al. Along the same lines, Rome recently announced a new Facebook page that promotes the beatification of Pope John Paul II. Monsignor Paul Tighe tells USA Today that the page is a move in the direction of greater interactivity: “What we found is that Facebook doesn’t just share information, it creates community. People begin talking to each other and sharing ideas.” He’s right! Just probably not on the John Paul II Facebook page. The page, which o…
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…r not that things can be better, but that they can be different. What this latest economic crisis finally and undeniably reveals is that the deck has been stacked against the little guy for many years. We cannot keep going this way. An authentic word of hope for today, then, must be transformational. It must recognize that we will never be the same for having experienced this shock, so we might as well come out of it better people, more tightly kn…
Read More…agerly clicked on it. I was surprised when I saw this wasn’t a clip of his latest hysterical stand up, but an essay he penned for the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog. The topic of his essay was how he came to be an atheist. The whole piece is here. While there is humor in the piece, it’s actually more of a sweet thoughtful response to all the people who ask him and other atheists why they don’t believe in God. And as my husband noticed, Gerva…
Read More…or past support. So many progressives rejoiced at Obama’s victory, but the latest developments mean we must keep close tabs on his administration. It’s admirable to want to bring your enemies to the table, but one must always remember they are still enemies. With no political support to repay, Obama’s inclusion of them signals that he’s ready to give the religious right more power than they have ever enjoyed within Republican administrations—who k…
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…o the spooky fairy tale has now transformed into a sort of love-story. The latest film version, Red Riding Hood, is thus a knowing participant in a very long folkloric tradition that takes us all the way back to Early Modern Europe. There are intriguing gestures toward each of the tales Orenstein rehearses, and they’ve even added a little vampire logic for good measure. These werewolves can pass their powers on with a bite, but only in the once-ev…
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