Religion Dispatches
…America, dissevered and divorced.” Though the Church had prospered in the United States, he lamented, it would be better off if it “enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority.” The notion that non-establishment might truly be in the best interest of both sides of the church/state divide was a core tenet of the Americanist heresy. The accused bishops for the most part denied they were guilty of any offense, and in time…
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…rtray a group of Jewish elders trying to determine how they will explain a number of events, all having to do with the State of Israel, to a young daughter; every line begins with the words “tell her.” The culmination is a bloody, vitriolic speech, defending the Gaza war of this past winter. The intended effect is clearly alienation from the speaker: Churchill has allowed the play to be distributed freely, so long as money is gathered at performan…
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…hate group and white supremacist group content has skyrocketed—even as the numbers of those groups have themselves noticeably increased. For example, the number of known hate groups is reported to have increased from roughly 600 in the year 2000 to 930 in 2014. Moreover, major television networks such as Fox TV have ushered hate content and white supremacist content into the media mainstream, featuring racialized rhetoric that ranges from disparag…
Read More…Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat, noted last year, the support of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and various evangelical groups for immigration reform (without UAFA) did not move a single Republican in favor of reform. The failure of evangelicals to alter the outcome of either Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal (which they opposed) or the passage of the DREAM Act (which failed despite evangelical support) at the end of the last Con…
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…ything to do with Christ dying for the “sins” of humanity. Third, I know a number of practicing Christians who give very little thought to the afterlife. I am one of them. I will even go so far as to say that heaven may not exist. I just don’t have a lot of stake in that idea. Now my view on this topic may change as I grow older and (hopefully) wiser, but today I think that the kingdom of God is about the here and now, which is all we really ever…
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…onal wrongdoing and shame will come surely, as many of the dioceses in the United States become uninsurable and the number of Catholic churches dwindles. As membership shrinks, the number of ordinations decreases, and the coffers dry up, perhaps the Vatican and its leadership will be forced to look at its decrepit, hierarchical structure, and fix it. I doubt it, however. Like the spider who crawled across Pope Benedict’s robes this weekend in Prag…
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…eptember 11 terrorist attacks. Robertson agreed, but this comes in at only number 8 since it was Falwell who did most of the inflammatory speaking. So, for what heinous “sins” did the United States “deserve” 9/11? Per Falwell, they included “Throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools.” He added, “The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this, because God will not be mocked,” before rattling off a list of “sinners” to blame:…
Read More…mit on the number of schools (no more than ten in the next decade) and the number of students enrolled. Opponents see charter schools as quasi-privatized schools (and also fear that this is a first step toward further privatization). They see even these limited charter schools as a threat to funding for public education—especially in these difficult budget years where public education budgets are already being slashed. Proponents, on the other han…
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…he Opera Theatre to be banned. The European Court of Human Rights has on a number of occasions found that the likelihood of counter-events does not justify restricting citizens right to peaceful assembly. The regional police also asked for the ban, although it is they who are obliged to protect all citizens exercising their right to gather. Indonesia: Anti-Gay Islamists Continue Rhetorical War On LGBTs Weeks of escalating anti-gay rhetoric in Indo…
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…elf. Two questions I have spent a lot of time thinking about over the last number of years is what form, structure, and expression the phenomenon we call “religion” will take in the future (that is, if “religion” is then still labeled as such); or, conversely, is there a future for religion (specifically formal, organized, institutionalized religion as we presently recognize it) in a rapidly globalizing, postindustrial and postmodern world? Back i…
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