Religion Dispatches
…the empire. Many leaders of the Church considered the sea-change a divine sign of the absolute truth of their religion, that historical success proves theological truth. It was a zero-sum view of the world: “Truth is with us. All else is falsehood.” That conclusion would haunt Christian believers some generations later with the extraordinary success of Islam. Within twenty years of the death of the prophet Muhammad, Muslim armies controlled the M…
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…to those questions: humans ‘play God’ all the time, every day (from the design, testing, and using of drugs to handing down court decisions); such new organisms need to be strictly regulated and monitored, easily traceable, and tested in the external environment, because they always do eventually enter it; the government, industry, universities, and scientists at the federal and international level should be and are discussing and monitoring such…
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…otesters got swept into the jailhouse. The UU engagement in Arizona made a significant impact. Following are seven lessons this experience offers for the faith community on effectively engaging and mobilizing people around the immigration crisis (or other social justice issues). 1) Engage leadership. The UUA president made a personal commitment on the issue. He offered to go to Arizona. He issued an invitation to others. He agreed to get arrested….
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…a shadowy leader with insidious motives and relationships. One man held a sign addressed to Bloomberg: “Don’t you know the Mosque has radical ties?” A woman at the hearing railed against a Cordoba Initiative project called the “Sharia Index.” During her statements, an advisor to Imam Feisal explained the project to me. Modeled after the UN Index, it was intended as a comprehensive measurement of quality of life standards in Muslim countries. It w…
Read More…nswers in Genesis, argues that the Smithsonian’s new Hall of Human Origins promotes atheism. Ham is one of the founders of the Creation Museum, proving that one museum’s atheism is another museum’s science. A Methodist minister will be tweeting the Eucharist 140 characters at a time. A Christian graduate student at Augusta State University is suing the school for religious discrimination because her counseling department demanded she work to chang…
Read More…’s billboard story: A “My Life, My Death, My Choice, FinalExitNetwork.org” sign in New Jersey has stirred criticism from Catholics and suicide prevention groups. Mainline churches are struggling to maintain their buildings as memberships and offerings decline. Some Christians don’t see the point of buildings. House churches are growing among many Christians disillusioned with traditional church structures. As one observer put it, “For many, church…
Read More…sewhere in the state, a Memphis pastor put a “Welcome to the Neighborhood” sign outside his church to welcome the new Islamic center being built nearby. And a new mosque has gone up in Lousiville, Kentucky quite peacefully. Is the BBC anti-Christian? The Florida pastor who had planned to burn Qur’ans on 9/11 has instigated protests in Indonesia and the threat of a flag-burning protest in Great Britain. Indian officials have called for a media blac…
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…they also decided to ban several other haircuts. This move strikes me as a sign of impotence on the part of Ahmedinejad. As I have written about regarding the Saudi Arabians, decisions like this are an attempt to flex muscles that do not actually exist. The crackdown on the public sphere is something that is usually resented by Iranians. However, after the rise of the Green Movement last year, the crackdown on men’s hair can be seen as a way to ex…
Read More…blown in from the Gulf of Mexico. When people face losing everything they love, prayer is a source of hope and comfort. However, the irony of our anti-science governor signing a prayer proclamation when he would not sign his name to protect the teaching of science is a bit much….
Read More…fspring, someone’s sibling, someone’s parent, or in some other way someone significant to someone else. As a survival mechanism we have a tendency to forge relationships of blood, friendship, or ideology, and then engage in competition with others who are at best more distantly related, and in some fashion “different” from us. It is for pointing out how morality based on such allegiances breaks down that I appreciate the parable of “the Good Samar…
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