Religion Dispatches
…ence that is reasonable and respectful. But there is a more inescapable truth about Engle’s “Dearborn Awakening.” He chose a speaker who lied, obfuscated, and confused. Should any of the participants want to learn more about Islam, if even to bring Jesus to Muslims, they have already heard the worst of the worst. And they’ll quickly find out that Islam is very different from what they were told it is. All the passionate music, jubilation, and spir…
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…yet another supporter told the Washington Times in January. “We’re Gonna Out*]}*number Them!” It’s familiar rhetoric to me, after years of covering the Quiverfull movement—a largely Protestant, homeschooling community that believes contraception is anathema to faithful Christianity and that having many children is both the most authentic form of anti-abortion witness and women’s highest calling. Its adherents aim to prove the pro-life claim that ever…
Read More…front and center in the healthcare debate, they have raised serious constitutional questions about what religious freedom and church-state separation mean. Many of the organizations and activists who are part of a coalition of church-state separation advocates have long done stellar work in raising awareness of encroachment of religion in politics and policy-making. Being able to keep the pressure on church-state separation issues during a campaig…
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…ipate. (LGBTQ adults and atheists still cannot do so openly.) As I read about Utah Pride in preparation for my remarks this upcoming weekend as the 2013 Boston Pride interfaith speaker, I couldn’t help but reflect on what I learned during a recent visit to Utah. It was late in the evening when I arrived, and I knew I would be there for only 24 hours. I was met by Alasdair Ekpenyong, a college sophomore who stands at the crossroads of intersecting…
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…t sixteen, I was too busy growing out my hair, playing in a band, hanging out with my friends, and being hopeful about my all-consuming (and generally nonmaterializing) romantic pursuits. I’m not sure I even noticed that an election was happening around me. Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps, and Representation Ismar Volić Princeton U. Press April 2, 2024 Following similar elections in Slovenia and Croatia the…
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…the bottom of the Court’s reasoning lies the hard ground of an important truth about the American system. Under our Constitution, religion is something special, something that is and ought to be treated differently from every other kind of activity. I bring this up because some of the recent jurisprudence on church/state issues is based on the very opposite view: that religion is just like everything else. In the 2001 Good News Club v. Milford Cen…
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…that it could have a bigger tent if it stopped playing to such a narrow base. One day, sooner or later, I’m sure they’ll see the benefit in that. For now, both Romney and Gingrich, and the Republican establishment, would do well to note that there is an increasing number of Arab and Muslim Americans. They are not one and the same. But, they are politically active, eager to vote, and often donate time and money to candidates and campaigns. They are…
Read More…e admission of a male-to-female transgender child to a troop in Colorado. But what about sex/gender reassignment surgery, which is chosen not only by transgender men and women, but also by adults who believe that they were surgically assigned the wrong gender in infancy? The very existence of intersex conditions and the surgery to remedy them undercuts the ostensibly unambiguous sex/gender categories invoked by religious conservatives such as the…
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…more common RD analysis or commentary. We won’t leave politics completely out of the analysis, but there will be no litmus tests for ideological conformity. There’s a wrinkle to this in that while I’m a longtime analyst and have only occasionally produced straightforward religion journalism, I don’t have a degree in the subject, nor have I ever made a living as a journalist. Likewise, while RD has produced traditional journalism in the past, it’s…
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…positioned to save the world is now looking to the globe to salvage its reputation. But it’s also indicative of the historiography that Noll, Marsden, and Bebbington helped found. In the rush to find the metaphor that best describes what evangelicalism “is,” few have asked what the term “evangelical” itself might be a metaphor for. Because regardless of the actual content of any specific definition of evangelicalism, the term is ultimately a socia…
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