Religion Dispatches
…h the eight-fold path? Yes, there are ways in which the Americanization of Eastern philosophy and religiosity is signified during the show; but for the sake of laughs (and of course a continuing network commitment), the show doesn’t stray too far from a rather superficial take on religion and religious thought. In fact, the solutions to life’s mishaps suggested on the show don’t seem radically different from those offered on “Leave It to Beaver.”…
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…predicted.” Came in the form of Russia “occupy[ing] and retak[ing] several Eastern European countries,” staring with Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.” Lack of action by the United Nations subsequently led to Russia’s occupation of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria. President Obama “deepen[ed] U.S. ties and U.S. trade with Communist regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia.” In the Middle East, “in mid-2010 Iran launched a nu…
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…ng other than it is? It is an important ally and a democracy in the Middle East, but also a flawed country that at times deserves harsh criticism and not reflexive adoration. In other words, a “normal” country, as Theodore Herzl envisioned it over a century ago. Has the age-old obsession now emerged in an inverted form? Has the guilt of centuries of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust yielded the State of Israel as a golden calf that can do no wrong a…
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…we see here—once we take religion scholarship into account—is not new, not East against West, and not grounded in a defense against, or for, radical or militant Islam. To begin with, the excerpts that have been released show that the novel is, in the judgment of some scholars of early Islam, neither well-researched nor well-written. One of the modern scholars, whose reading of Jones’ manuscript for the press started much of the criticism, is a pro…
Read More…political unification of Europe 5. Failure of peace attempts in the Middle East 6. The worldwide threat of nuclear weapons. To some, these signs may prove alarming. But as Dr. Hindson noted in the conference, “Biblical prophecy is not designed to scare us, but to prepare us.” The rapture of the saints at the return of Christ is a message of comfort. As Titus 2:13 tells us, we must be “looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our grea…
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…the pages of the newspapers and on the television. When a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment—you can’t miss it.” Wasilla Bible Church is now promoting a September 13 Focus on the Family event called Love Won Out, a workshop on how to cure homosexuality through prayer [see pdf]. From 2006 on: Juneau Christian Center, Pastor Mike Rose Once Palin was elected g…
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…ent of the Iraq War, Regnery has added defense of the Bush administration, promotion of the war on terror and Islam: [This year] Regnery published two books that fanned fears of Islam and justified the U.S. invasion of Iraq and war on terror using the clash of civilizations language of Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington: Mark Steyn’s America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, and Mark Sieff’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle…
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…Santa Barbara, California. Don’t worry about human suffering in the Middle East, the pastors taught, worry about God’s will. People nodded and took notes, and in that room everything I thought I knew about the world felt worthless before the vision of mystical order. Talk like this can’t be used: speak it, even hear it, and it uses you. You become it. Something similar might be said for pronouns. As long as we remain simply we, they will stay them…
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…rk, most of it in Southern Africa, with Kenya and Nigeria representing the East and the West respectively. While one may squabble about some of the choices—why for instance, Ghana was not chosen to bring more representation to West Africa—no one volume can do everything. This book is a product of a collaborative effort among the authors, Anglican scholar Cyril Imo writing on Northern Nigeria, church historian John Karanja on Kenya, theologian Anth…
Read More…r participant ever since. “Christian Zionist leaders have, for decades at least, been making coded and covert anti-Semitic statements and some of them have been pushing conspiracy theories that derive historically from such works as the Protocols of The Elders of Zion,” according to Wilson. “If one thing is clear, it’s that from now on there’s going to be a somewhat heightened level of scrutiny of public speech from Christian Zionist leaders.” “Th…
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