Religion Dispatches
…of racial brutality. In May of this past year, Ta-Nehisi Coates penned a searing article in The Atlantic entitled “The Case for Reparations.” In it, he detailed the history of American oppression of black people, from slavery to Jim Crow to racist housing police, and called, inter alia, for Congress to establish a “Commission to Study the Reparation Proposals for African-Americans,” as urged by Congressman John Conyers’ (D-MI) H.R. 40, a bill that…
Read More…t such hideous posts are all from Saddleback membership. I’m sure quite a number are. It’s as disturbing as it is disgusting. Warren commented on Tsang’s article, “Thanks so much for teaching us! It was removed instantly.” However, Warren did not get around to posting a formal, public apology until the next day, once again, via Facebook: Finally back home. Staff handed me a hard copy of an email from someone offended by a picture I posted. If yo…
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…(and consciousness-raising) but to intervene in the bodily practices that are part and parcel of how social power works. In reading that I remembered a documentary film I had seen on the ex-gay movement, One Nation Under God. The film documents the movement and tells the story of two early leaders of that movement who renounced it after they fell in love. Knowing very little about the ex-gay movement at the time and remembering the scenes of butc…
Read More…ffering a positive word like “good,” or “honest,” increased from 18% in 2011 to 24% in 2012. All of these gains were concentrated among Republicans voting for Romney, naturally. Still, the number one word survey participants associated with Mormons? “Cult.” And fully 27% of survey respondents still have no idea what religion Mitt Romney is….
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…e. To be sure, many of the outlandish things Robertson has said over the years are funny—but that doesn’t mean they’re harmless. Through his efforts to build and expand the evangelical and fundamentalist alternative media ecosystem—launching CBN well over three decades before Fox News Channel came on the scene in 1996—Robertson has done incalculable damage to American civil society. In 1991, he published a book that popularized New World Order con…
Read More…elves trying to say they know how to do his job better than he does. It’s particularly fun when this kind of reaction comes from Catholic pols, some of whom seem to think they’re literally more Catholic than the pope. On the other hand, nobody gives a crap about Rick Santorum. No, the real action has been with the probably-has-a-chance-to-win,-sort-of establishment candidate Jeb Bush, who had this to say: I hope I’m not going to get castigated for…
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…ccurate to portray the nones as mostly atheists and agnostics when they clearly are not (although the numbers of atheists and agnostics are rising as well), the subtext that the nones haven’t fully thought through their choice to disaffiliate from religion is offensive—and it’s a prime example of how journalists talk over nones instead of to us. Bolling, by contrast, works directly with students, which gives him valuable insight into their mindset…
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…are, because the clock is ticking and they’re almost out of time. The standard narrative of white evangelical history is a great withdrawal from culture in the 1920s and then a reengagement in the 1950s, leading to the religious right in 1980s. Do you want to revise that? Yes. That’s one of the historiographical arguments I’m making in the book. The traditional argument is that fundamentalists were active and engaged in American society until the…
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…ourts; namely, that discussions of religion should neither promote nor disparage particular religious beliefs, nor favor religion or non-religion over the other. The First Amendment Center’s The Bible & Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide and the Society of Biblical Literature’s Bible Electives in Public Schools: A Guide provided a starting point from which to consider whether a course’s approach could be considered nonsectarian. The results o…
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…a. And during the Great Meltdown of the 21st century’s first decade, one heard nary a hint of organized Protestant protest as Wall Street got bailed out while Main Street was left to fend for itself and as Bible Belt states decided that it was better for uninsured poor people to go without medical attention than to expand federally-paid Medicaid coverage or create health care exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. At the root of this depressing…
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