Religion Dispatches
…chy and challenged the world? Did he expect, as he funded so much of the African Union, that his life would end with him shoved to the ground by fighters from Misrata? We’re not sure exactly what happened; it seems, as of now, that he was shot while trying to escape, quickly captured, and died of his wounds. Those who seized him did take him to an ambulance, but we’re not sure if he was tortured, mistreated, left to die—the details may or may not…
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…ren kept going to safety. They fled to the Sinjar mountains along with thousands of other Yazidi refugees. After many days, she said, the Kurdish militant movement, the PKK, opened a corridor of safety for them to escape. She has heard reports that teenage girls were taken to warehouses where they were auctioned off to “old men” who bought them as sex slaves. Some were bought for no more than a thousand Iraqi dinars, which amounts to less than a U…
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…year: When he goes to Uganda, he’s not known as Scott Lively, but as an American evangelical… The Africans don’t always have the resources to follow their statements so they say: this man of God says this is going on in the world. Or Scott Lively goes to the Uganda Anti-gay Conference, and the media says that an American evangelical says there’s a gay agenda… In four hours, he teaches them about the gay agenda [that’s seeking] to take over the wor…
Read More…tanic monument at the Oklahoma capital (apparently a statue of a Native American warrior placed on top of the dome in 2002 is actually an idol of Baal erected by Freemasons). A letter writer expressed that the Satanic statue should be allowed because it would force the Illuminati to reveal their Luciferian plans to the world. But most callers essentially argued that the Ten Commandments should be allowed and the Satan monument forbidden because th…
Read More…ll use the term “mix tape”?) While she’s out and completely unreachable by phone, her dad, Ken, goes into the hospital with breathing difficulties and is admitted to intensive care. Taylor finally gets the message, is stricken with remorse and concern, prays for her dad’s healing, and resolves to be more responsible. My Dinner with Frankie: Mark and Cheryl Perry invited their teenage daughter Olivia’s friend Frankie over for dinner. Since Olivia h…
Read More…imself an unexpected media darling. Becky Garrison caught up with Bell via phone to talk about his motivations, the reactions of his friends and family, and what he hopes to discover. BG: What’s your reaction to this surge of media coverage? RB: When I started this, I thought my blog would only be read by a few people. It’s been surreal. I have no clue how to make anything go viral, so this is totally unexpected. But eventually, I think this atten…
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…etermined to be at the funeral of David,” said the bishop. Speaking on the phone the day after Kato’s murder, Senyonjo said he was shocked by the death of his friend, who he had known for the past seven years and worked with at the religious LGBT organization Integrity Uganda. “I was very much surprised. I didn’t know that they [people in Uganda who are anti-gay] would be so serious as to kill somebody like that who had been mentioned in Rolling S…
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…ons and UFOs, it’s easy to assume that all Baysiders are paranoid and hysterical. But when I did my ethnography I found that most Baysiders were pleasant, reasonable people. I also found that Baysiders exerted a lot of agency in terms of what they believed and how they practiced. Some seemed more interested in conspiracy theories about the Vatican or the various disasters Lueken predicted. But others seemed to enjoy Baysider vigils simply because…
Read More…nightly MSNBC show late last month, Lisa Darden knew she needed to make a phone call. Darden, a filmmaker and talent agent, had been interviewing conservative evangelical Christian leaders and getting a behind-the-scenes look at the religious right for the past several years for her soon to be released movie, For Such a Time as This. The documentary seeks to bridge the gap between anti-gay Christians and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgende…
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…gence apps” including As One America, which contains the name, address and phone number of Christian neighbors “who are not showing up to vote or who are not registered.” He then showed a map with big red arrows pointing to precincts “within striking distance” from Vida Church to the precincts that are “where the devil’s got a stronghold that God wants to break up.” The app was developed by Superfeed Technologies, which has also designed apps for…
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