Religion Dispatches
…th blogger Bruce Wilson, founded Talk2Action, an interactive blog covering breaking news and analysis about the Religious Right and related movements and issues. Raised in New England, Clarkson attended Hobart and William Smith Colleges where he majored in English. While in prep school during the Vietnam War, he encountered “a yellow covered book with big black letters on the shelf in study hall.“ The book was Gandhi’s Autobiography. “My eyes were…
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…ifts under their own feet. Some might call these concerns a case of purity politics. But there are multiple politics of purity just as there are multiple pragmatisms. At some point in U.S. history, the majority of liberal Christians made peace with the militarism and neoliberalism that have come to characterize the Democratic Party. Somewhere along the way, no amount of tortures, incarcerations, and deportations could stop strategic support. With…
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…the Gospel of John, where truthful speech is the organization of the whole world. So untruthful speech would then be undoing the image of God. What’s interesting about Augustine, though, is theologically he takes that position, but when you read his books about lying, he’s constantly having to make exceptions. You know, you can conceal, you can intend differently… Well, it can be hard to know what exactly makes something a lie. These debates about…
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…of the planning commission in Antioch, California suggested letting the virus run its course to kill the weak, elderly and homeless in order to relieve health care and Social Security costs. These perspectives are not outliers. We’re in the grasp of the politics of death over whose lives can be sacrificed (just as Black Lives Matter protesters across the nation). It did not and does not have to be this way. There’s still time to choose solidarity…
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…an. This is the version of events most people know to be true. But, in the world of QAnon… READ MORE Go to top 6. Satanic Temple’s ‘Satanic Abortion Ritual’ May Challenge States’ Anti-Abortion Laws, Joseph Laycock Last week, The Satanic Temple (TST) introduced “the Satanic Abortion Ritual”—a ritual designed to provide religious support and comfort for women who’ve decided to get an abortion. But the ritual has legal consequences as well as spi…
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…es—during which time the HPA will be organizing fans to destroy seven real world horcruxes (an evil magical object used to attain immortality). This campaign is designed to run as a parallel between the actions of Harry, who must destroy Voldemort’s seven horcruxes before the end of the final book in order to bring about Voldemort’s demise, and the actions of the HPA. In the five years since its creation the HPA has grown into a sophisticated and…
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…. That book chronicled what he termed the “move of the Holy Spirit” in the world today, and that the healing and deliverance ministries of Pentecostalism would reform the church. Wagner is not a theologian—and this is an important point—because much of what he is teaching is not filtered through systematic theology, or any other creed or doctrine. Rather, it is from the realm of the “Holy Spirit” and is “spirit-led” or derives from “divine revelat…
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…ficult to get smaller and smaller segments of the population vaccinated. Already, there are some signs that it may be a struggle for churches and other religious institutions. Religious leaders are exhausted after the long, disruptive siege of Covid. Their congregations are fearful for their corporate survival even as they embrace new ways of doing church, and are controversy-shy in the aftermath of the 2020 elections. Particularly in rural areas,…
Read More…from a fake news site. Not like Jon Stewart fake news. Or even Onion fake news. Actual fake news. “By the way,” Stetzer added, “if you are a pastor you should already know that no one can make you officiate anything. In fact, you can refuse to officiate an interracial marriage. You’d be an idiot and a racist, but you wouldn’t be arrested.” The other “story” Stetzer highlighted claimed “a sodomite ex-con turned author, Bradley La Shawn Fowler” sue…
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…qi Shiism, I did not fully grasp the meaning of the ‘hidden imam’ prior to reading Rubin’s chapter. Nor did I have the ability to explain its role in Central Asian political upheavals over the past 30 years. American scholars of Islam and some Muslim-American laypeople could probably have done much better than me. My point is not to dismiss the value of knowing the theological, historical, and geographical particulars that divide one path of Islam…
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