Religion Dispatches
…elites revered and paid homage to “authentic culture” from the Mississippi Delta or from Bristol, Virginia. But never mind. Bubble is as Bubble does. After Tuesday’s election, coastal elites have been busy opining that “we” should be empathetic towards heartland Trump voters. “We” should feel their pain. We should stop shaming Trump supporters. We should stop making fun of their religion. Now in the Rocky Mountain West, neither heartland exactly n…
Read More…l under the City of East Lansing’s non-discrimination ordinance and which, officials contended, violated the spirit of the farmers market. East Lansing officials repeatedly encouraged Country Mill Farms to “voluntarily elect not to attend the market” for the rest of the season. Country Mill Farms declined, and continued to staff its booth at the East Lansing Farmers Market. Between the end of the 2016 farmers market season and the beginning of the…
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…. On the one hand, this is the generation that began in historically large numbers to leave institutional religion behind and embrace the eclectic, episodic, “spiritual but not religious” life that Melinda Lundquist Denton and Richard Flory call “back-pocket” religion. And that, of course, is if they’re religious at all. Many no longer are, and are therefore in equally historic numbers flooding the agnostic, atheist, and “unaffiliated” (or religio…
Read More…. Rev. Michael O. Minor is fighting fat from his pulpit in the Mississippi Delta. He may want to mix in a few sermons on marriage. The Bible Belt has a higher divorce rate than the Northeast, researchers say. Some rabbis are getting help from comedy writers for their High Holy Day sermons. Glenn Beck (remember him?) held his rally in Jerusalem on Wednesday. More than 1,000 folks (mostly Christians) showed up. For personal use when the comments sec…
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…cs were polled separately from the undifferentiated mass of “nones,” their numbers would be better. In any case, the report’s assumptions notwithstanding, the data clearly show that America’s white Christians continue to exhibit a large and dangerous anti-social and anti-democratic streak. The report’s treatment of the white evangelical demographic in particular seems to be overly rosy, given that the drop in white evangelical vaccine refusal from…
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…hat. I’m not seeing a lot of evidence that “some” adds up to a significant number. Not, at least, on the grounds of Novavax’s supposed selling point. To be fair, that’s not all there is to the piece. In fact, the question about Novavax’s allure reads like a wrapper for a bigger narrative about anti-vaxx activism merging with right-wing Christian nationalism. There’s an interesting story to be told there, and you should follow all the links in Jenk…
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…issue, explaining that the difficulty of protecting the president near the site was too great. And other presidents, including Bill Clinton in 1996, have not visited the Wall either. In general there has been little response, positive or negative, to the news that the president would not go to the Wall. But Americans and Israelis concerned with civil rights in Israel should be applauding the news, because there are many good reasons why President…
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…ave a firm answer until the FAQ was published. Since the FAQ is not on the official project website, the purpose of Park51 may still change. A project can, should and will evolve, yes, but the base case or starting point for that evolution needs to be clearly defined and clearly understood. This lack of leadership also means that an important constituency has not been consulted: the Muslims that the center supposedly represents. I have asked repea…
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…dly. Faced with what was initially meant to be a week of protests, Wichita officials requested that the clinic close, and Dr. Tiller complied—kind of. In fact, says Peggy Bowman, who worked for nearly a decade as Dr. Tiller’s spokesperson, the clinic never closed, but instead snuck inside a number of late-term patients who couldn’t delay their abortions, and kept them there, sleeping on cots and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for severa…
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…the Old Testament because they’re long and boring…” Here pauses. “Granted, Numbers is like…” “I like Numbers, but anyway…” mumbles Caleb. “The real impetus for the game,” Thomas resumes, “is to get people to engage in Scripture and read stories they’ve never read before. When a concubine is cut up into twelve pieces, that imagery is really offensive. But a lot of people didn’t even know that story existed in the Bible.” I suspect they’re right; re…
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