Religion Dispatches
…s.tv conversation with Peter Beinart, it’s worth noting that David Brook’s latest atrocity is also a shallow recasting of the ideas of Reinhold Niebuhr, except that meh, it’s not. If you’ve read Moral Man and Immoral Society, you’ll know that Niebuhr was indeed concerned with the tradeoffs in moving from individual to social relationships. As the book’s title implies, Niebuhr thought it was easier for individuals to be moral, because they didn’t c…
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…uraged priests, very particularly, to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audio-visual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, Web sites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization, and catechesis. Many commentators saw Benedict’s statement as a bold move by the Roman Catholic Church into a new era of open, interactive communication with the faithful. But the Pop…
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…net helps you become well-informed—knowledgeable about current events, the latest controversies and important trends. The internet also helps you become hip…” Really? I’ve taken a gander at Brooks’ 924 Facebook friends, and, if I may say so, there’s not a lot of hip there. Okay, you could probably say the same about my meager 438 friends. But my friends are smart—both well informed and cultured; savvy with regard to current trends and true masters…
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…ortal philosophical enemy of our biblical religions. Evolution is just the latest widely accepted perspective that gives Chance an essential role in how life came about and continues to change. At stake for the Creationists is a fundamental question: Is God in charge of history, or does Chance play a role? If Chance plays a role, then God is not in charge. And if God is not in charge, why bother? The Creationists’ intuition is correct: the conte…
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…s seem like lesser evils. So I wondered whether to acknowledge Robertson’s latest provocation. It bores me, and I feel cheapened even to think about it as I worry about one of my students who has not yet returned from a mission trip to Haiti. Still I could not resist clicking on a list of Robertson’s top ten greatest gaffes that I found in the blogosphere. It was amusing to ponder the rankings. Does Robertson’s feat of leg-pressing 2000 pounds (th…
Read More…tion is key to the survival of any media figure: just ask Madonna. And his latest move from connect-the-dots-conspiracy-theorist to ecumenical revivalist seems to be working for Beck. Part of what’s fueling the new surge of talk about Beck is the fact that he has cannily plugged right into a thorny theological issue: the question—important to evangelical Christians—of whether Mormons are actually Christians. A Pew Forum survey in 2008 showed that…
Read More…are the activist leaders who help fan this grassroots support? Look at the latest anti-gay robocall in Michigan, and you’ll see a line straight from the American Family Association’s radical homophobia to Mike Huckabee. In the robocall, reported by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post, the head of AFA’s Michigan affiliate, Gary Glenn, and its affiliated Campaign for Michigan Families, repeatedly describes his target, Democratic state legislative candi…
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…conservative group who will advise the pope and select his successor. This latest crop includes more Italian cardinals than those from developing countries even though the so-called “Third World” is where Catholicism is growing. Things change slowly if at all in Rome. But the not-so-coincidental similarities in the cardinals’ respective paths to the red hats, eventually to the conclave, and perhaps even to the papacy itself, make for a cautionary…
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…lah with fear and paranoia, it makes perfect sense that they’ve become its latest victims. Which is especially sad because, as too many Pakistanis seem to have forgotten, love is in fact at the heart of the spiritual ethos upon which the country was founded. Per the words of the poet-philosopher Allama Iqbal, in Masjid-e-Qurtaba: “Love is the holy prophet, love is the word of God.” A dogmatic theology stripped of its spirituality necessarily lacks…
Read More…d Paul, uses reporting from a GQ article about Paul’s college days, in his latest political ad: According to the August GQ piece, as a student at Baylor University, Paul, among other things, belonged to a secret society called NoZe, which aspired to blasphemy, and, while stoned, kidnapped a woman, tied her up, and demanded that she worship the Aqua Buddha. (Paul has denied kidnapping anyone, but the GQ piece has photos of him with his NoZe brother…
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