Religion Dispatches
…ricature, and stereotype on a platter for white audiences to devour. I was really, really uncomfortable watching this film. The question then becomes: what is so disturbing about Perry’s new strategy? Perry’s audience shift dismisses the deeply-rooted history of racism in black entertainment—a history that is especially tricky when we look at the implications of black performance targeted for or at white audiences. In the film, George has an epiph…
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…desire for spirituality. What about him makes you think that? He was still really attached to Christian culture. He would sometimes still go to services and sing really loudly. He would occasionally write about how hard it was for him not to believe, and he would write with such longing that you would have the sense that he sort of did still believe. Many people on the left today are adamant regarding church state separation, and even that religio…
Read More…it will be much harder to cast doubts on TST’s sincerity, at least in a legal context. This shift from illicit to licit status is the reason TST’s opponents have already vowed to lobby the IRS to reverse the decision: Tax-exempt status signals that the government sees TST as a “really real” religion entitled to all the same rights as Christianity. While TST is not the first Satanic organization to obtain this status, it is the first group that cle…
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…ans, they can’t afford to sit on the sidelines in this fight. They have to really get out there. They have to do what they have to do, and they have to win. The chains are already tightening around all of us. “I’m being indicted for you.” With language evoking the theological logic of substitutionary atonement, Trump talks of himself as a savior figure who is being indicted on behalf of white evangelical Christians. I’m a very proud Christian, act…
Read More…o back to those deeply held convictions about scripture in the past? Do we really want to go back to slavery, to the subjugation of women and division of the races (those last two may have some evangelical support, I think)? Do we really want to uphold the deeply held conviction of the ancient Hebrews that unruly children should be put to death along with homosexuals? The Bible still supports these things even though we—including most “modernist”…
Read More…ll it that—were the skeptics who believe that death is indeed final; their numbers increased by 15% to 46%. It’s true that 42% and 46% are not that far apart. It may be that Moody offered a bridge between the two sides. Summing up the “death as final” side, Carroll said: The question is not, Is it conceivable that there are other realms? The question is: Is the evidence in favor of that other realm so overwhelming that it causes us to dismiss the…
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…ell. (Alternatively, we could stick with the Hebrew term, the foreignness of which heightens the foreignness of the biblical concerns about homosexuality.) One thing remains clear, though: what’s really abominable here is the word “abomination” itself. *Originally characterized Tammuz as a goddess not a god (thanks to reader Kay Dekker for catching the error)….
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…helmingly Christian, and where that Christianity is so often disfigured, I really think that one imperative is just to remind people of the peculiarity of Christianity. And also the fact that, if it’s about the powerlessness of God, it’s about God putting on the mantle of poverty. So it’s simply inconsistent with Christianity, to believe in rampant capital accumulation. Cornel West has described you as a “secular philosopher.” Do you agree with hi…
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…od in the world.” While “more than you think” is too subjective a claim to really take issue with, what these statistics obscure is that evangelicals are nonetheless three times more anti-science than mainline Protestants, and those who do see religion and science as “complementary” would have science become much more evangelical-friendly. The RNS story was picked up by the Huffington Post and the Washington Post, while Scientific American feature…
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…iscussed? Do you think it would have been a good idea? For me it was never really an issue, because I have this HBO series I’m doing, The Brink. Jack Black, Tim Robbins. I’ve already been committed to that show. So that was one thing, on a purely contractual level I wasn’t really available. I had another job. On a personal level, I don’t know if I want to take that chair. The conversation never came up, and I don’t know if it’s something that I wo…
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