Religion Dispatches
…from a 70-something, self-described ex-hippie named Herb who frequents the East Atlanta coffee shop where I often study. Perhaps noticing the text on Buddhism sitting beside me, he asked, out of the blue, something like, “So do you know about the cataclysmic event that’s gonna happen tomorrow night?” “Which one?’ I responded, thinking he was referencing the economy, or the election, or the environment, or just about anything else that has been in…
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…Blind Spot is not half bad. The book includes a dazzling chapter by Middle East scholar Michael Rubin on the value of knowing a thing or two about post-1970s Iraqi and Iranian Sh’ia Islam (“Three Decades of Misreporting Iran and Iraq”), which should make any reader wonder how things have not gone exponentially worse for the United States in Iraq. There is also a valuable insider look at human rights initiatives launched by Christian groups during…
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…maneuvering: The world is a mess. Violence in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia threatens to further destabilize regions where chaos breeds religious extremism. The deep roots of the current economic crisis—a global economy powered by fossils fuels and unsustainable American and American-style consumerism—must be carefully but decisively eradicated. And a pernicious but largely unreported militarism at the leading edge of science…
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…Romney, what he truly despises is everything Romney represents: the rich, East Coast, insider elites who dominate the Republican Party. Huckabee, the son of a fireman who struggled to make ends meet, effectively wages class warfare against the party insiders and libertarian “faux-cons” in Washington; he lashes out at the likes of National Review magazine and the Club for Growth, whom he calls “the silk-stocking crowd,” for looking down their nose…
Read More…h the eight-fold path? Yes, there are ways in which the Americanization of Eastern philosophy and religiosity is signified during the show; but for the sake of laughs (and of course a continuing network commitment), the show doesn’t stray too far from a rather superficial take on religion and religious thought. In fact, the solutions to life’s mishaps suggested on the show don’t seem radically different from those offered on “Leave It to Beaver.”…
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…predicted.” Came in the form of Russia “occupy[ing] and retak[ing] several Eastern European countries,” staring with Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.” Lack of action by the United Nations subsequently led to Russia’s occupation of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria. President Obama “deepen[ed] U.S. ties and U.S. trade with Communist regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia.” In the Middle East, “in mid-2010 Iran launched a nu…
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…ng other than it is? It is an important ally and a democracy in the Middle East, but also a flawed country that at times deserves harsh criticism and not reflexive adoration. In other words, a “normal” country, as Theodore Herzl envisioned it over a century ago. Has the age-old obsession now emerged in an inverted form? Has the guilt of centuries of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust yielded the State of Israel as a golden calf that can do no wrong a…
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…we see here—once we take religion scholarship into account—is not new, not East against West, and not grounded in a defense against, or for, radical or militant Islam. To begin with, the excerpts that have been released show that the novel is, in the judgment of some scholars of early Islam, neither well-researched nor well-written. One of the modern scholars, whose reading of Jones’ manuscript for the press started much of the criticism, is a pro…
Read More…political unification of Europe 5. Failure of peace attempts in the Middle East 6. The worldwide threat of nuclear weapons. To some, these signs may prove alarming. But as Dr. Hindson noted in the conference, “Biblical prophecy is not designed to scare us, but to prepare us.” The rapture of the saints at the return of Christ is a message of comfort. As Titus 2:13 tells us, we must be “looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our grea…
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…the pages of the newspapers and on the television. When a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment—you can’t miss it.” Wasilla Bible Church is now promoting a September 13 Focus on the Family event called Love Won Out, a workshop on how to cure homosexuality through prayer [see pdf]. From 2006 on: Juneau Christian Center, Pastor Mike Rose Once Palin was elected g…
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