Religion Dispatches
…data: 50 percent of white evangelicals say they believe capitalism and the free market are at odds with Christian values. According to the survey, white evangelicals are more likely to say the free market and Christian values are at odds than black Protestants, mainline Protestants, Catholics, and religiously unaffiliated Americans. On first glance that seems difficult to accept given white evangelicals’ overwhelming electoral support for the Repu…
Read More…mmensely polite attitude of people searching those coming into Tahrir. The free teas that were spreading all around Tahrir, no doubt paid for through the charitable support of someone in the crowd, or donated by the tea-shop owner – its just another part of the Egypt I have always known. But the Egypt I have known would never have seen people feeling free to voice their criticisms of the president so strongly or openly – that type of attitude cert…
Read More…onsequential things. They matter. Sure, in the modern world we do have the freedom to choose our guiding stories. And, here in postmodernity, we do have theories that relativize and contextualize, making that choice seem arbitrary. But none of this means that, once we’ve chosen an idea, it exists in a vacuum, tickling our minds and having no effect on things like, say, funding for scientific research, or the rights of children to have a public edu…
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…when it comes to “doing good,” and about how to distribute eleven tons of free food in two and a half hours. __________________________________ Your first book was a memoir, the story of how you came to church for the first time, and stayed. But—and this might be because of your background as a journalist—you seem less interested in talking about yourself, and more about the context you found yourself in. Yes, to actually write about myself was n…
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…hristians have merely been paying lip service to democratic principles and free elections, or whether they really believe in those principles and norms now that white Christians have become a demographic minority. This is all quite new—this reality of not being a majority white Christian country. We’ve gone from 54% white Christian to just 44% since Obama was first elected, or a drop of about 1% per year. Previous generations of white Christians h…
Read More…ed States. But we might remind our European friends that a political arena free from religious concerns is the exception to the global rule. Even among their own “I” nations, while Iceland’s politics may maintain a secular purity, Ireland and Italy are decidedly more complicated cases. Which is all prelude to reflecting on this electoral season’s “pastor wars,” now mercifully in abeyance, but liable to heat up again at any time. Linking one’s poli…
Read More…se of Religion” that people “sometimes fear the Bible will be destroyed by freedom of thought and freedom of speech. Let it perish if such be the case. Truth cannot fear the light, nor are men so mad as to forsake a well of living water. All the free thinking in the world could not destroy the Illiad; how much less the truths of the Bible, which … has already endured the greatest abuse at the hands of its friends, who make it an idol, and would ha…
Read More…ting to believe that insular religious societies are treated by some as a “free pass” from engaging in good journalism. And the line between news, documentary, docudrama, and entertainment is frequently blurred beyond recognition. Reality shows such as TLC’s “Breaking Amish” on and the Discovery Channel’s “Amish Mafia” are scripted sensationalism, total fabrications of authentic Amish life. “Amish Mafia” gives the impression that it represents hi…
Read More…determining whether or not a regulation is actually a burden on someone’s free exercise rights. And because of the way the doctrine works, it’s harder for the government to satisfy the rest of the test once the burden has been established. Part of that low bar is due to the fact that the opinion continues the slippage between the concepts of sincere religious belief and substantial burden that were evident in Hobby Lobby as well. The Court notes…
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…have a couple’s night, you have childcare, you have all this stuff that’s free and really hard to say ‘no’ to. CS: Sure. I like the way you emphasized that in the film, because I think it’s a really important American reality that many Europeans probably don’t grasp. Just, the extent to which it’s difficult for those who aren’t religious to get themselves plugged into a socially supportive community, which you need all the more because we hardly…
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