Religion Dispatches
…fraught at the same time. I should know. After all, I wrote a book about African-American women, and found that many of the women I studied in the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) historically either had outlived their husbands, been divorced, or were too busy doing church work to be tied down to a husband. Having a husband meant that they could not give their ultimate all for the number one man on most African-American womens’ lips, and it’s not D…
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…loc on the SBOE pushed through curriculum standards promoting Christian Americanism, an ideology claiming that, as Mark Chancey writes,1 “America was founded to be a Christian nation governed by Bible-based laws, that the country has tragically departed from its roots, and that it should reclaim its Christian heritage.” The 2014 adoption process marked the first opportunity to see how textbooks would be affected by the 2010 standards. (For more RD…
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…an imperial vision of American power that imposes its hybrid-version of American democracy/American gods around the world through support of dictators considered “men of God” (Haiti’s Papa Doc Duvalier, for whom Family members arranged congressional support, Efrain Rios Montt, the Guatemalan killer championed by Pat Robertson, etc.). That, sadly, is the link between the killer bunny and its ostensible victim, fundamentalism and the establishment….
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…n times more people than watched the Democratic Presidential debates. That number, combined with 36 million liberal Protestants (with “growing irrelevancy”), is just a bit below the viewership for the Super Bowl. As to causes of decline, if we move to the margins of demonic institutions does this slow it down or speed it up? He calls for greater vitality on the left, and I agree that this is better than steering right or being tepid—but at best wh…
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…ulture. Housed within the new museum will be the Center for the Study of African American Religion, a $10 million project that aims to further research on the inextricable role spirituality has played in black America’s past and present. I took a moment to speak with its recently appointed chief curator [and current advisor to RD’s “Remapping U.S. Christianities” initiative], the Rev. Yolanda Pierce, about the goals of the center and the narrative…
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…natural imaginary that can, in times of crisis, begin to displace more empirically grounded attempts to solve challenges that define our 21st century reality. It is only by acknowledging the historical pervasiveness and consequences of this kind of supernatural thinking—in the Third Reich and elsewhere—that we might work to counter its influence. Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich Eric Kurlander Yale University Press July…
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…tuencies has influenced what Obama believes he can and cannot say. As an African American whose father came from a Muslim family, he is under even more pressure than most candidates to avoid being labeled as “anti-Israel.” Ironically, a strong case can be made that the right-wing militaristic policies he may feel forced to defend actually harm Israel’s legitimate long-term security interests. A Political Necessity? If indeed Obama took these hard-…
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…he Native American victims of Wounded Knee, and every interned Japanese American, we make America redeemable by the policies we pass between prayers. In remembrance of the dead, we turn our collective power as voters and democratic participants into sacred acts. Through political action, people of faith and conscience ritualize hope and create space for prophetic grief in spite of—in defiance against—the starkly American narrative of hatred and vi…
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…than in the leadership? My congregation has been very supportive. A small number of people chose to leave. Some of them not because of their feelings around the issue of homosexuality, but they just struggled with the church being in the news. But that was a small number, and most folks have been very receptive. Many immediately began telling me about their family members, and all of their personal stories. My vulnerability in sharing let them op…
Read More…aception. So is the salient difference the size of the list? Is there some number of things-this-paper-can-be-used-for that puts the employer at a safe moral distance from the act, where previously they had been complicit? If so, what’s the number? How long does the list of possible uses have to be to assuage the employer’s conscience enough to let the employees use their compensation for things the employer finds morally repugnant? See, here’s th…
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