Religion Dispatches
…evils” of secular society such as “abortion on demand, fornication, homosexuality, sexual entertainment, state usurpation of parental rights and God-given liberties, statist-collectivist theft from citizens through devaluation of their money and redistribution of their wealth, and evolutionism taught as a monopoly viewpoint in the public schools.” At the extreme right wing of Dominion Theology is a relatively obscure theological movement that Mik…
Read More…wmakers from whining that science is mean to them. As NCSE points out, an example of this supposed persecution was exemplified in Ben Stein’s cynical piece of schlock Expelled. (My review of the movie is here.) In addition to Texas, another anti-evolution bill was also introduced this month in Florida. HB 1854 would require “a critical analysis” of the teaching of evolution in public schools. The bill is little different from legislation current…
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…-door neighbors believed this odd little story. As it happens, one of my next-door neighbors is a Marxist atheist, but the neighbors on the other side do attend the hip, youth-oriented Christian church in town. As such, what they believe may bear some family resemblance to Dawkins’ sketch. My guess, however, is that the resemblance is about as close as what the typical political cartoon rendition of President Obama bears to the real man. That is,…
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…oxy for these left-center-right divisions. The Pew social conservatism index reveals some deep chasms between the evangelical left/center and right. On social issues, the differences are most pronounced on the issues of stem cell research, abortion, and the morning after pill. A majority of left/center evangelicals support stem-cell research, legalized abortion, and access to the morning after pill without a prescription. There is a remarkable 50-…
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…ews of Germany were persecuted—but where would their persecution lead? To exile? Or to extermination? Buber’s letter shows both his respect for Gandhi’s thought and his concern for making distinctions between the Jewish situation and that of Indians in South Africa and India. Buber addresses the Mahatma respectfully: I have been very slow in writing this letter to you, Mahatma. I made repeated pauses—sometimes days elapsed between short paragraphs…
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…ago where months before I spent a good deal of time trying to understand. Explaining is not defending except for those who prefer a life of uninformed hate.” He also disagreed with Smith that he “had written a pro-Obama book that would draw evangelicals away from McCain.” And he pleads with the right-wing Christian readership that has pre-judged his book to remember that “being a Christian and a conservative is not tantamount to having a brain byp…
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…dy for some serious War on Culture…er…culture war. So there’s Christian as code-word for ‘evangelical.’ Like when Republican politicians say it. And there’s Christian meaning Protestant, as opposed to Catholic. And there’s Christian the way a missionary might mean it, (as opposed to heathen?). And there are those “anonymous Christians,” or involuntary Christians…was that Rahner who devised that category? Does anyone outside of seminary or grad sch…
Read More…, he argues, distinguished her beliefs from the pious rules-oriented religious right of American politics, ostensibly making her a more independent-minded evangelical. It’s the same image raised by the popular photographs of Palin sitting on couches draped with bear-skin rugs, next to taxidermied Alaskan King Crabs: a new archetype even a purist can appreciate. Tough, Western Christian women in dresses with guns. The truth of the matter to remembe…
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…ult on God’s holy people. Numbering all the familiar arguments about homosexuality would extend and perfect this habit of citing scriptural verses without worrying much about what they mean. It would also help us to avoid an awkward question—all the more awkward for being so obvious: Why do we repeat these arguments so energetically, so incessantly? In the joke about the prisoners, the repetition is easy to explain. They are locked up, they have n…
Read More…tic who’d crossed him as “the bull butterfly of the literary teas”—but he expressed his hatred of homosexuality in such queeny terms that even those who shared his bile turned a blind eye to their man’s evident relish for a certain campy rhetorical style. Pegler was meaner than Limbaugh, but there was also more to him than Limbaugh. Peg hated fascists, until he became one. He despised fat cats, which may be why he came to loathe himself and anyone…
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