Religion Dispatches
…. But that doesn’t cause people to believe they are God’s chosen. That kind of thinking has been with us since before the founding of the republic. It has always been with us. It will probably always be with us. Whether it has access to real power, however, is the question….
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…session with rainbow-colored duct tape over their mouths and lying on the floor with their hands and feet bound. At ThinkProgress, Jack Jenkins said the commission might lead to a reorganization of the church that could potentially “grant bishops the ability to institute LGBT-friendly policies within their areas of responsibility.” “This historic action by the Council of Bishops (COB) represents a significant institutional shift in the direction…
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…ppointed official on behalf of their constitutional rights.” There are, as with most of Reed’s biblical analogies, a number of basic textual and historical problems here. To scratch the surface: Roman citizenship would have been rare among the earliest followers of Christ; Paul probably was not a citizen himself (this detail appears in the romanticizing later narrative of Acts of the Apostles, but not in Paul’s own letters); and, the “emperor’s ho…
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…ns Aidoo, told a Ghanaian radio interviewer that he believed the NGO had inflated the number “for its own selfish gains.” Unsure of the prevalence, Aidoo told Joy FM that there are landlords looking for gays among their tenants in order to report them to the police. If they are arrested, he said, then the courts can test the strength of the law. According to the Joy FM report, Aidoo hoped “to get rid of these people in the society.” Some observers…
Read More…te change, he’s screwed. For funsies, I pulled the numbers for Protestants from the same study. The situation between conservatives and liberals looks about the same as it does with Catholics: It does with Hispanics, too: It’s the Evangelicals dragging everyone to the right. It’s always the Evangelicals….
Read More…ording to Wikipedia there are over 7,000 Episcopal congregations in the US with over 2 million members, though the significance of that number is unclear since, as the priest in the church where I was baptized once teased me: “when you’re baptized we have you; you’re ours and you don’t have much to say about it.” Recent reports indicate that about 350 congregations have departed to affiliate with more conservative Anglican Bishops outside the U…
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…Religion—to the narrow—the Hindu American Foundation’s map of Hindus worldwide (with accompanying demographic information comparing “Hindus/Asian/Indian” favorably on various socioeconomic rankings to other racial and nationality categories). Unlike other kinds of maps, maps of American religion must negotiate the difficulty of that term—what counts, what doesn’t, what options can be offered to those polled? The Pew Forum’s much-cited Religious L…
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…ose, such as those found in Gandhi and Wolff’s article, are actually in conflict with the project on the politics of knowledge these authors wish to endorse—i.e., deconstructing what are taken for granted as historical or social truths that buttress white supremacy. We should also avoid simplifying the historical narrative around yoga’s global dissemination and popularization. Gandhi and Wolff, for example, suggest the reasons yoga became popular…
Read More…ease is due to the debates over immigration reform; but even factoring that in, Hispanic churches are becoming more politically active. The number of congregations might be few, but they may also be larger communities, representing a substantial number of people. In any case, the trend will only continue as Hispanics continue to grow as a part of the US population. Which brings us around at last to the joke in the headline: Can the religious left…
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…ship a god, let alone which god. Americans are free to be godless (as a growing number are), or, if they wish, to worship every god from every holy book. Olsen’s commandments would prohibit free expression and art by outlawing the creation of graven images; prohibit free speech by making it illegal to take the Lord’s name in vain; and, per the tenth commandment, it would criminalize thought (potentially condoning slavery and the treatment of women…
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