Religion Dispatches
…while continuity with his predecessors was emphasized. Cardinal Dolan of New York saw very little to fuss about. The pope, he suggested, couldn’t quite help himself and that he was “on a high” from the buoyant celebrations and meetings with enthusiastic crowds in Brazil. Furthermore, there was nothing new in the pope’s deciding not to judge the heart of a gay person: “It’s been a pretty clear teaching of the church based on the words of Jesus th…
Read More…There are lots of Bosnians, white and Western enough to pass for everyday Americans, though the occasional hijabs might throw you off. There are a few Americans, who seem to be intrepid backpackers. And I can’t figure out what the many Gulf Arabs are here for. (The Americans seated next to them seem just as perplexed, but additionally faintly alarmed.) Some of the Arabs are young, wide fellows with mighty beards and rust-colored thobes. Others ar…
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…nfluence of religion on our public square. Thus, in his quest to fashion a new American conservatism, Mr. Hochman misses the mark by concluding that religious conservatives are no longer a core demographic of the GOP. One of the categories scholars draw upon to understand how Christianity pervades American conservative politics is Christian nationalism. According to Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead, Christian nationalism describes a cultural iden…
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…nistration,” Politico Magazine, November 3, 2023, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/03/american-moment-conservative-00124178. [50] Paul Dans, “Paul Dans: America’s President Can Only Remove 1% of the Administrative State,” interview by Steve Bannon, War Room, Rumble, September 2023, https://rumble.com/v3i71t8-paul-dans-americas-president-can-only-remove-1-of-the-administrative-state.html. [51] The Heritage Foundation, “Mandate for Lea…
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…ng together new gospels: this is another aspect of the New Age that is not new at all. New Science, Ancient Religion But the premise on which this text is built is new; one fascinating example of the complex interweaving of new scientific knowledge and ancient religious wisdom. The reason this book is called The Aquarian Gospel has to do with the (relatively) new modern science of astronomy. As Levi’s wife, Eva S. Dowling, explains in her introduc…
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…ead belief in ghosts and spirits in America, the politics of race, African American religions, and New Orleans and/or Atlantic world history. I hope the book will be assigned in undergraduate and graduate classes, especially undergraduate. Beyond the academy and its classrooms, A Luminous Brotherhood will bring an academic analysis of Spiritualism to the popular audience. A recent Harris poll reported that 42 percent of Americans believe in ghosts…
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…ngages more of a public audience. Currently the Lilly Endowment Curator of American Religious History at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, Manseau has been writing with curiosity and verve about our spiritual ancestors for two decades now. A founder of Killing the Buddha alongside Sharlet, Manseau is a prodigious, prolific, immaculate prose-stylist who has explored everything from the Victorian combination of technology and occultism (Th…
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…storical Jesus and what that means theologically, in particular to African Americans. King’s tweet referenced the “Flight into Egypt” (Matthew 2:13) when the holy family were called to flee to Egypt to avoid the “massacre of the innocents” by King Herod. This scriptural reference has served as a prooftext that Jesus and his family were going to hide amongst “Black” people in Africa away from the fury of an infanticidal despot, hence King’s emphasi…
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…ng of drift away from and even hostility toward the establishment by young American Jews, and New York Times columnists Roger Cohen and Thomas Friedman, whose critiques are laced with laments over the decline, in Israel, of the liberal Zionism they grew up with and still cherish. Beinart now writes for Israel’s leading left-leaning newspaper Haaretz, where this summer he has repeatedly questioned Operation Protective Edge, both morally and strateg…
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…ian, but in many ways we have made the pilgrims themselves characters in a new faith. The New England settlers constitute both the Genesis and Exodus of the American scripture. The pilgrims are celebrated as the originators of the American ideal, embodying religious liberty, thrift, industriousness and individuality. Historical fact is secondary to mythical power. The Mayflower leader and first governor of the Plymouth Colony William Bradford, amo…
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