Religion Dispatches
…ple. It’s what you can do for yourself and others. As it is, White evangelical Protestants have it both ways. A vote for apartheid free of consequence, free of guilt….
Read More…at remain) has been attacked or threatened, is evidence of the strong ties between Christian and Muslim in this country. Seeing the immensely polite attitude of people searching those coming into Tahrir. The free teas that were spreading all around Tahrir, no doubt paid for through the charitable support of someone in the crowd, or donated by the tea-shop owner – its just another part of the Egypt I have always known. But the Egypt I have known wo…
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…at hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed”? Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” Rather sentimental people often argue that the more science one knows, the less mysterious and wondrous nature becomes. But this is…
Read More…es. Lebanese Muslims work predominately as businesspeople in the lucrative Free Trade Zone, one of the largest free trade ports in the world. In the city center, many residents are descendants of West Indian laborers on the Panama Canal throughout the twentieth century. The city has one of the highest rates of poverty in the country. Every year, a group of black Muslims in Colón hosts an event to celebrate Eid-ul-Udha, a holiday that marks the end…
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…in religious and educational approaches to the world. Long-term alliances between religious institutions, and the mutual engagement between different forms of expertise, are essential to this paradigm. Steven Prothero rightly has pointed out the profound religious illiteracy of most American citizens, and has called for an educational curriculum that includes the study of religion as a prerequisite for 21st-century citizenship. Even more importan…
Read More…Smith jurisprudence,” she wrote. RFRA didn’t expand the scope of religious freedom rights, and in the case law there is “no support for the notion that free exercise rights pertain to for-profit corporations.” There’s a reason for that, Ginsburg maintained. While the Constitution and the courts have long recognized a “special solicitude” for religious organizations, there is no such solicitude for commercial entities. The reason for that is “hardl…
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…assroom, in the public sphere, and in the halls of Congress would foster a better understanding of what scholars of religion can (and do) contribute to public conversation and policy making. Perhaps the most obvious place to make a contribution is definitional: what constitutes antisemitism or Islamophobia—and what exactly do we mean by Israel? Who gets to make those decisions, and what’s at stake for them in doing so? Words can function as contai…
Read More…onsequential things. They matter. Sure, in the modern world we do have the freedom to choose our guiding stories. And, here in postmodernity, we do have theories that relativize and contextualize, making that choice seem arbitrary. But none of this means that, once we’ve chosen an idea, it exists in a vacuum, tickling our minds and having no effect on things like, say, funding for scientific research, or the rights of children to have a public edu…
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…an evangelicals believe that the world is in the grip of a cosmic conflict between God and Satan. That means that every earthly problem or concern – whether political, economic, or military – is merely the result of a spiritual battle taking place in the heavens between the forces of good and evil for control over humanity. Imagine laying out a map of the world and covering all of the nations and states with little figurines of angels and demons r…
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…g to bow to them, instead creating a new holy space where the oppressed go free. What better moment to consider our place as faithful Christians than during this season of Advent? In a time when American Christianity has perhaps sold its soul for 30 pieces of silver, taking refuge in the security of a violent empire, we would do well to remember that our good news first came as an act of divine protest in the body of a poor, brown baby born in a b…
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