Religion Dispatches
…ne of evangelical conviction,” is the focus on international Christianity. Number five on the CT list: Christians flee Iraq and Gaza: About 13,000 Christians—or one in two—left Mosul in October. In Gaza, churches where hundreds worshiped until recently are attended by less than a dozen. Historic Christian communities are becoming history. 4.) TOP TEN ONION RELIGION STORIES: “Jewish Elders Lift Ham Ban.” For instance. 5.) TOP TEN ABUSES OF RELIGION…
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…Association for the Sociology of Religion, and the Religion Section of the American Sociological Association. Elaine Howard Ecklund examines contemporary American religion and its intersections with science—specifically, how scientists interact with religion and how religious believers make sense of science. She is the author of Science v. Religion: What Scientists Really Think. In her writing, including including Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety…
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…lative to other companies in the pharmaceutical sector. But it has taken a number of decisive actions to reduce its risk “exposure” regarding greenhouse gases. Abbott has taken for example, a “Climate Responsible Energy Policy” that includes a five year plan for reducing the emission of CO2, our principal greenhouse gas. Among other things they are developing a carbon-neutral vehicle fleet: it is the first and only Fortune 500 company to commit to…
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…inant models of analysis: number crunching and psychology. Greenspan was a number cruncher, says Brooks, and unfortunately, human psychology caught up with him. Greenspan saw real estate values continuing to soar with no end in sight and allowed himself to be persuaded that they would never stop rising, and certainly would never fall. So he never had to think about petty psychological realities, like a crisis of confidence, never mind an actual pa…
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…ief revisiting here. A Missouri state program offered grants for a limited number of nonprofit schools and daycares to purchase rubber playground surfaces made from recycled tires. Prospective grantees were evaluated and selected based on a number of factors, including poverty level of the surrounding area and their willingness to generate media exposure for Missouri. In 2012, Trinity Lutheran, a Missouri Synod congregation, applied for the grant…
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…ety” while simultaneously witnessing the apparent evaporation of cherished American values. They responded by reverting to apocalyptic jeremiads. This was most evident in the runaway success of Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth, the best-selling nonfiction book of the 1970s. At the same time evangelicals, although scorning Hollywood, turned to modern technology to preach Armageddon. The result was the cult phenomenon A Thief in the Night,…
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…thers take exception to the book’s emphasis on the quotidian uses to which Americans have put the Ten Commandments (“The Ten Commandments of Love,” anyone?). When it comes to matters of faith, or Moses or these ancient dos and don’ts, I’m not being disrespectful or even irreverent when I train my sights on the ways in which all three phenomena insinuate themselves into the rhythms and paraphernalia of daily life. I’m being an attentive historian o…
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…t Poll, however, with a much higher number of Mormon participants, put the number closer to 45 percent. Both figures are well below previous Mormon voting percentages for the Republican candidates, but they indicate that at least half of Latter-day Saints were willing to stomach Trump’s apparent moral deficiencies. This turn of events has historical precedent. Though the LDS Church’s political affiliation was malleable for the first century of its…
Read More…learning from our colleagues and exploring these complex histories over a number of years, we have found that religious liberty is not a single, stable principle existing outside of history, as it is often depicted (particularly in policy circles in North America and Europe and by many academics invested in promoting religious freedom). It is, rather, an inescapably context-bound, polyvalent concept unfolding within divergent histories in differi…
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…se people were just holdouts, who would soon give up or die off. The large number of young families I saw at St. Joan of Arc—around a third of the parish—suggest to me what others must have by now have realized: that this constituency is not going anywhere soon.” Lefebvre’s views wove together theological, ecclesiastical and political conservatism. Though, like all traditionalist groups, the SSPX claims to be preserving the Church’s immemorial tra…
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