Religion Dispatches
…boredom? I wonder. Needless to say, to the extent that longevity research promotes ways to alleviate the suffering caused by debilitating diseases such as Altzheimer and Parkinson, they are all very beneficial. However, I also believe that all programs about extension of human life cannot be divorced from the deeper reflection about the purpose of human life. Such reflection seems to be missing from the transhumanist literature. One could object…
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…anti-modern flourish, to the rote and tired moral panic that characterizes today’s conservative movement. Each speaker races to outdo the next in offering the most bleak and doom-laden prognosis of the fallen era. “2020,” announces movement founder Yoram Hazony in hushed tones to begin Monday morning’s plenary, “was a watershed year in the history of the United States [and] in the history of the democratic world…a change in [the] political paradig…
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…similation is never complete with any group, it certainly will not be with today’s immigrants either. They will change the culture, for better or for worse, just as their predecessors have—but I would say, they will change it likely to a greater degree because the initial gap is wider.” If people from different parts of the European continent “remain different all the way up until today,” he reasons, “what about people from different continents?”…
Read More…tained that “we are witnessing that kind of growing repression in the U.S. today and it is fostering or at least giving rise to the spread of the persecution of Christians and religious minorities around the world.” If requiring health insurance for contraception is a “massive violation” of the rights of Christians, what is starving their schools of funding? In a letter promoting Family Research Council’s first-ever tour of Israel scheduled for th…
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…ection, and distortion of so much that feels familiar in American culture. Today, Ramdev is both a monastic and an entrepreneur. He is a proponent of all-natural products and a Hindu nationalist. He’s a TV star. He has a following of millions. He’s getting ready to open a university and a network of schools. And in the past few years, he has emerged as a major ally of India’s ruling right-wing party. It’s no stretch to describe Ramdev as a kind of…
Read More…tarted becoming a shtick.” In an early October interview with Christianity Today, Warren said that he hadn’t worn a Hawaiian shirt “in two years” and that he “doesn’t even own one.” Warren also said that he was tired of being labeled the new Billy Graham: “I’m very tired of it. I have said many times, there is no successor to Billy Graham… If there is any successor to Billy Graham, it’s Franklin, who has continued to do evangelism. Most media only…
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…, Lutheran, and most Protestant, including evangelical, mission is defined today by a servant model. Modern Christians express their discipleship through medical, educational, agricultural service to those who need it, because they see the fully human Christ in all the faces of the needy and marginalized. The Christian martyrs in Afghanistan called themselves “the hands and feet of Jesus, not his mouth.” There is a lesson here for “progressive rel…
Read More…eligious traditions. There are bloody, vindictive religious traditions (as today’s not-so-new atheists insist on reminding us), and there are those which soften the human tendency toward vengeance and violence. Religion does not have the answer, because it has all the answers, the right and the wrong. Religion is less a glossary of terms (justice means this, righteousness that) than a grammar, a framework for moral reasoning. It is a language in w…
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…he Handmaid’s Tale is portrayed as more extreme than what we see around us today. Atwood was a scholar of the Puritans, and there are echoes of Puritanism in the visuals (those outfits, public punishments, forced prayer), and in the plot devices. And yet again: there are constitutional issues at hand in our present-day reality. Sure, freedom of religion is increasingly being used as a weapon by conservatives, but who’s really threatened by that? M…
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…ch on Washington, has endorsed the use of her uncle’s name, insisting that today he would be called a “social conservative.” In fact, King strongly supported Planned Parenthood and was awarded the Margaret Sanger Award in 1966. King’s thoughts on war, peace, justice, community, civil rights, and religion sound quite unlike those who quote him today but opposed him then (or would have if they were alive). The struggle continues to keep King’s drive…
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