Religion Dispatches
…hat “the hand of Providence” is on Israel, Peterson cautioned, “I would be really careful about saying that in a political context, I would really want to balance it out if I were speaking publicly as a politican to express concern and support for legitimate Palestinian aspirations.” Peterson said he worried about Romney’s statements because “I don’t want Mormons to be seen as so pro-Israeli that we discount actual grievances that I think in some…
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…n these matters in order for our country to be blessed, and that there was really no such thing as a “neutral” public school—take God out, and you’re in fact “indoctrinating” children in “secular humanism” by default. These anti-pluralist beliefs fuel right-wing attacks on public education, whether in the form of book banning and the “CRT” panic, or via vouchers that deprive public schools of funding that can then be funneled into Christian school…
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…t of the world coming to an end like it’s supposed to. And there’s nothing really that they can do.” After Sarah chimed in “Yeah, we can’t stop it,” Julie continued, arguing, “That’s why we need to be educated in the Bible, so we know what signs to look for. Because you’re just wasting all that money on research when it’s, sadly, not going to help.” Such views contrasted with those I heard from people who believed that Jesus would return to Earth…
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…eir child being taken away from them in an act of terrorism. We need to be really respectful of that, and really responsive to just how urgent that would be for someone, that their child might be at risk. On the other hand, we also need to look at the way that this fearsome world is in a certain sense desirable. There’s a way in which it charges the world, it gives it this extra affective electricity. We need to be very focused on not letting ours…
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…t saying wait a minute, there’s a common denominator here. And in order to really get to social justice, we’re going to have to see how all of these groups are impacted by the dominant group—in this case White Christians. It was an evolution over time where my focus shifted from focusing on racial and religious minorities to focusing on White Christian America. If we’re going to really make change in this country and rethink the way we do things,…
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…York, but I was raised in a beautiful piece of country side in England. I really, really miss it. I own a cottage with my sister and brother. It’s a bleak part of the English coast with dunes and the sea goes out for two miles. It’s very windy, and I just love it. I go there and it fills my—whatever atheists have in the place of a spirit. This whole interview and I haven’t even mentioned your great, great grandfather Charles Darwin. He said that…
Read More…frequency the fringe viewpoint which claims that Jesus is unlikely to have really existed, having been concocted from earlier myths and stories (although why anyone would try to pass off a figure based on dying and rising gods as a crucified Jewish Messiah is never adequately explained by those with such views). On the other hand, there are many who assume that Jesus really was in history as he would later be “remembered” by the church not only in…
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…tic parable, every portentous aside with one eye on the only audience that really matters—the fans beyond number who will one day venerate him, a radical apocalyptic prophet born sometime around 4 BCE, as a god. “I know that one day a big artist is going to get killed onstage, and I know that we’re going to go very big,” Bowie told an interviewer, in 1974. “And I keep thinking: it’s bound to be me. Go out on me first tour, get done in at me first…
Read More…play: the braggadocious showmanship that panics his opponents, but doesn’t really change anything. (See also: the contraceptive mandate rollback and May’s “religious freedom” executive order, which the DOJ memo references as its impetus.) The current cultural conversation around “religious freedom”—especially the discussion emanating from the White House—is likely to be settled (for a time, at least) by this time next year. What will have changed…
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…ho came to get food and stayed to help out. But that’s exactly who I am. I really understand what that’s like, to come in shame and fear to some church and be fed—and then want to stick around to help others. And people want to give something, so much. They wind up giving to people who aren’t like them, or who irritate them, or people they adore. And it’s funny, the desire of churches to make it into a social service program is so profound—like we…
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