Religion Dispatches
…s. I am not sure why, but the Moroccan audience—and Bab Makina has a large number of upper-class Moroccans in attendance—really enjoy gospel. It’s an appreciation that appeared to cut across generations. Based on comments I heard, people are aware that many of the songs praise Jesus as the son of God, an idea that is anathema to Muslims. Unfortunately, I could not understand the appeal, outside of the aesthetic, but it was wonderful to see so many…
Read More…se it’s going to serve certain interests and not others (more on that in a minute). What’s a bit more interesting is what I think Cavanaugh would have to say about the Benedictines’ response to their sister’s death: it is predicated on a radically different assumption of common identity that resists the national narrative laid out by the anti-immigrant activists. If we are connected primarily by being children of God, not by national identity, it…
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…e-oriented Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero in Manhattan. Wait a minute, my (non-Jewish) boyfriend asked me, did they drop a letter from their name? Are they the Defamation League now? A Wounded People Those of us who have watched the ADL for years were less surprised. The sad truth is, while there is an interesting backstory which explains some of this bizarre situation, the ADL has long been out of step with more progressive elements o…
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…and inviting allies from around the nation to join them. Despite the last-minute injunction halting the worst aspects of the bill, planned protests and prayer vigils across the country proceeded, and many resulted in significant media attention. The religious community was engaged and integral to most of the local organizing, but the leadership didn’t come from denominational structures. Rather, it came largely from immigrant rights and worker ju…
Read More…ebuttal ad, released weeks later, proved to be effective and led to a last-minute fundraising boost — but it was too late. While white Democratic mothers—who had previously been supportive—were mostly those who abandoned their opposition to Prop. 8, the study showed fathers and voters between the ages of 30 and 49 also changed their minds. The research did not ask about religious affiliation but did show that many Latinos, especially women, grew i…
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…ply poured out upon us—so too it reminds us that at a political level, the minute we start constructing political structures that we think are unambiguously right, we are making our own politics into God. Nobody does that more than Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck calls for context at the beginning of his show. Dr. Cone wrote Black Theology and Black Power in 1969 in the heat of the Civil Rights Movement and Beck’s great fear is that immigrants will latch o…
Read More…the same point again, only more obnoxiously. I’ll bottom-line it in just a minute, but here’s the theological set up. According to Walter Brueggemann (reading the Exodus narrative), “static religious triumphalism” funds a politics of “human oppression and exploitation.” That probably seems opaque, but the point is simple. When God (or the gods) guarantee and legitimize the social order, they inevitably come to represent the interests of the wealth…
Read More…r God’s sake, don’t start with education programs for churches and arguing minute policy details with Congress. Hit ’em with something motivational, like the truth: Dear Mr. President & Congress: Our economic policies are a disgrace. They are structured to keep the vast majority of people poor or running as hard as they can to keep pace without actually making any progress. Meanwhile, the rich get richer and call the poor people lazy. That’s not C…
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…, the narrator declared, “The Jewish people are coming to Christ in record numbers.” The goal of some Christian Zionist and Messianic Jewish groups is the repatriation of all Jews to Israel, and the conversion of all Jews to Christ. Saturday afternoon’s sermons reflected those hopes. The Jewish humor of David Chernoff, one of the Messianic movement’s most prominent rabbis, fell flat when he addressed the crowd. The mostly gentile audience just did…
Read More…ectly traceable to Dr. Rushdoony’s work.” James Dobson, who offered a last-minute endorsement of Paul, had voted for Phillips in 1996 as “protest vote” against the GOP. Ron Paul spoke at the Constitution Party’s fundraiser in 2009, as did John Birch Society president John McManus. Reconstructionists share the worldview of the John Birch Society, which as Adele Stan reported, has enthusiastically praised Paul’s victory over Republican Trey Grayson….
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