Religion Dispatches
…ding up to this year’s election.“ (For more on Pray the Vote, go here) The promo for Craig Detweiler’s new book Into the Dark reads: “Detweiler, a well-respected film expert and media spokesperson on Hollywood and Christianity, examines forty-five twenty-first-century films that resonate theologically—from The Lord of the Rings trilogy to Little Miss Sunshine—offering groundbreaking insight into their scriptural connections and theological applica…
Read More…view LGBT people—as purely sexual beings. Foster’s screed is simply a long promo for a new ex-gay movie coming out, and the trailer, three-minutes of nauseating footage, centers around how each of these former homosexuals lived their lives in clubs, engaging in cheap, easy, and often public sex, or were sexually abused. For all the claptrap the religious right yells about how they don’t want to think of us “that way,” the trailer for the film is p…
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…inciple that imagining creates reality has captivated modern readers,” the promo copy explains. The publisher probably didn’t expect the book to resonate quite so uncomfortably with the political moment when they chose November 8th—Election Day—as its publication date. But indeed, Donald Trump’s distinctive style has roots in the spiritual tradition of which At Your Command and The Secret are both a part. Neville was just ahead of his time. Born i…
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…med in Catholic settings. Although Catholic officials expanded an existing code of medical ethics in 1948 to include directives on contraception and abortion, Catholic hospitals didn’t share a unified ethical code until 1971. Reports of hospitals in some dioceses performing abortions and providing contraception to patients led the USCCB to publish a new version of the ERDs and require every diocese to adopt them. This would prevent what Father O’R…
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…dt, a prominent figure in the conversion therapy bubble, who traveled from Germany. A member of the IFTCC Board of Directors from 2017 to 2020, Vonholdt directed the German Institute for Youth and Society (DIJG) until 2021—an evangelical think tank that has worked with right-wing organizations in the US, like the Institute for Religion and Democracy and the aforementioned NARTH. Vonholdt’s DIJG is connected to the Reichenberg Fellowship (known in…
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…ack” by accepting the draconian terms of the Versailles Treaty (which held Germany responsible for all moral and material damages incurred during World War One). They also targeted groups that Hitler identified as threats to Germany’s survival in the future. These included Jews (“black parasites of the nation”); Bolsheviks (the “scum of humanity”); and war profiteers and international capitalists—the forerunners of the “globalists” Trump regularly…
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…ch has already been written. Because of the vast and influential nature of Germany both before and during the Third Reich; because of the sheer scale of the Second World War; and because of the unprecedented number of documents preserved in hundreds of archives and libraries across dozens of countries, this is obviously not the case. The second is that there’s little to no reality behind popular cultural representations of the Nazi supernatural. W…
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…eich” from Jesus, and that, therefore, the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany was in accordance with divine will. (Jehovah’s Witnesses were in fact persecuted and sent to concentration camps in Nazi Germany.) While a lot of his manifesto reads like the unique ramblings of a distressed mind, there is another trait the Hamburg shooter shares with other far-right mass shooters: antisemitism. In his manifesto he spreads the classic Christian anti…
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…cartoon. Julian Reichelt, the disgraced former editor-in-chief of “Bild,” Germany’s largest right-leaning tabloid, who was fired after a New York Times investigation found claims of sexual harassment and inappropriate sexual relationships in the work place, had already attacked the cartoon. In what can only be described as an attempt to channel Tucker Carlson’s rants over M&Ms’ clothing and Mr. Potato Head’s genitalia, Reichelt had called the car…
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…US should stay out of European affairs; some Americans were sympathetic to Germany post-World War I. The radio priest, Charles Coughlin, broadcast these views to millions. He was kind of the Rush Limbaugh of his day. Nazi influence in the US culminated with a huge march and rally in New York City in 1939. Thousands gathered in Madison Square Garden to listen to blatantly fascist speeches under the banners of George Washington adorned with swastika…
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