Religion Dispatches
…uring the Lenten season is no coincidence. Typically this is a time for American Christians to saturate themselves in a premature Easter triumphalism; thus the abyss is never broached. Many religious people in general and Christian people in particular will not be able to dwell in the sustained, unresolved lament of Untitled Unmastered. So the prophets do it for them. And it came to pass after the slavery of America and its plundering of dark bodi…
Read More…ns of the president. Last year, he came under fire for meeting with the American Bible Society president “to begin a dialogue on the importance of the Bible in the founding of the country.” In 2010, the White House refused to comment on DuBois’ phone call to religious right ideologue David Jeremiah after the latter called the president “a dangerous person” moving the country toward “socialism.” It was obviously an incident the White House would ha…
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…rom his office outside Chicago, Ward asks people to consider to whom is America supposed to be “restored?” When Ward hears a white protest leader tell a predominantly white crowd to “take it back,” he has no doubt that some in the audience want America “taken back” from people of color and “restored” to white people. And he heard this rhetoric increase after Obama was elected. “[When people who] oppose the Obama reform of health care claim we are…
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…claim, is “freedom.” We often feel we need know nothing at all of the historical or social situations that give rise to important climactic moments in countries other than our own. How many of the people who play the Kuma Games Qaddafi mission will know much more of the story than what they play in the game? A game that is, by necessity, being designed and filtered through the lens of the game’s creators, who may be as ignorant as we are of the co…
Read More…a piece of paper on the dashboard of Roeder’s car: It contained the phone number of Cheryl Sullenger, Operation Rescue’s senior policy advisor, who served two years in prison for conspiring to bomb abortion clinics in 1988. Roeder also told me that Sullenger was present at the lunch with Newman where they discussed “justifiable” homicide, and that Newman had given Roeder the autographed copy of his book just three months before Roeder killed Till…
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…or his reformation. Popular Christian piety contributes to the problem. American Protestant Christianity emphasizes a quick and easy forgiveness: tell Jesus you’re sorry, and you’re forgiven. Not only are you forgiven, your sins now stand “as far as the east is from the west.” That’s good news, and I believe it, but it has nothing to do with one’s qualification to hold moral responsibility in an institution. God may forgive a person, and so may we…
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…out the case over the years. “[…] Chen is not the kind of activist that American authorities would have wanted to help,” claimed Julio Severo a blogger for LifeSite, “Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are shamelessly pro-abortion, while Chen is pro-life.” Matthew Cullinan Hoffman alleged in a LifeSite op-ed that the Obama administration would rather see Chen disappear. Like many anti-abortion activists, Hoffman maintains that the Obama administrati…
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…elate to. We’ve lost the ability to help weave them back together. This American life, where democracy apparently means that everyone can own their own weapon of mass destruction, is one place where it feels like double death itself is doubling. We are unequipped—socially, politically, intellectually, psychologically, spiritually—to cope with death on this scale. I believe that one of the reasons why we’re so unequipped to do this is because so ma…
Read More…m as a “pervasive and aggressive movement” fueled by such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way and others. These groups are attempting to “remove references to God and Jesus Christ” from American life. One particular concern for the Southern Baptist messengers is Christmas. The resolution “encourages believers to be aware of businesses, schools, and all other public institutions in their areas that are removing…
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…erything. So now if I’m trying to open up a bank account, I’m doing a cell phone application, or anything, that statement is there, it has just gone into everything, every aspect of one’s life, it’s there. It’s ridiculous to have that, but nonetheless it’s real. The problems are not just administrative: Ahmadis have a “glass ceiling” in the civil service, and discriminatory use of voter registration lists (Ahmadis are enrolled separately) keeps th…
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