Religion Dispatches
…W. Bush No sooner had he been seated than Bush told him that he “hoped [Daschle] would never lie to him.” Blindsided and perplexed, Daschle responded lamely by saying that he hoped the President would never lie to him, either. The point of that exchange is that lying was already on this President’s mind, even before he took office. It is on everyone’s mind now. The proposed special prosecutor who will soon be appointed to look into the Gonzalez f…
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…tors are queer, which reflects the damage—or “nurtured insanity,” as Frank Schaeffer calls it in his foreword—fundamentalist Christianity has done to queer people just based on the number who have left. But it also demonstrates why Christian denominations that trot out their “welcoming and affirming” credentials may need to do more; they may want to spend some serious time listening to new members who have arrived from a fundamentalist background….
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…roup of Birmingham college students who had been persuaded by one of their number that this was worth the wait. It was. It is hard to describe the experience of standing in the second row of a rock concert, untold numbers at your back, without sounding trite. In a world in which it is possible to conduct nearly all communication via one machine or another, to travel from one climate-controlled setting to the next without exchanging so much as a mo…
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…has come to Bonnaroo with a friend working in one of the booths, and she describes herself as someone familiar with the excesses of the festival circuit. “It’s different coming here sober,” she says. She also tells us that even though she does not actively proselytize, she has had a surprising number of conversations about her faith during her time at Bonnaroo. “The people here are trying to fill themselves up with something.” When she tells that…
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…lculations, one-third of evangelicals don’t vote, and when you factor this number against the number of votes needed to tip battleground states like Pennsylvania, there’s not much convincing that needs to be done to turn the election for Trump. It might seem like a small affair, until you realize that JD Vance was one of the speakers at the Courage Tour event in Pennsylvania. Predictably, demonic rhetoric underlies a lot of the Tour. From what I’v…
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…stories and analyses of popular cultural examples, I would have liked to discuss a number of other issues that are triggers for body shame because they involve physical experiences in which we have no (or limited) control. Menstruation, skin tone and complexion, and body hair are just a few examples of topics the book doesn’t delve into because the scope of issues it does cover (i.e., disability, weight, chronic pain and illness, and aging) is alr…
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…belief in spirits and ecstatic trances; throughout my childhood I remember scholars, scientists, and artists travelling from Europe, Mexico, and the United States to participate in “shamanic” trance workshops under her leadership. My grandmother inspired me to become a scholar, but I was always skeptical of spirits, and moreover I was doubly skeptical of the notion that the modern Western world had lost its magic. I found myself shifting gears and…
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…s. They were driven to resistance and even to regicide by their fear of episcopacy: they feared that their model of congregational governance would be outlawed and they would be forced to suffer under bishops and use prescribed Anglican forms and formulas still reeking of their popish provenance. Some who fought with Cromwell came back over from Massachusetts and Connecticut in order to do so; the very judges who condemned King Charles to death we…
Read More…what that process should look like and to enter into face-to-face conversations with those who have respectfully responded to his call for meaningful discovery and discourse. [Note: For videos of the conference sessions click here.]…
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…stitutional Court ruling in 2015. A group promoting the initiative cites a number of studies to support their argument that the initiative is needed to protect the best interest of children; among them is the widely discredited New Family Structures Study by Mark Regnerus. Their use of other studies has also been publicly challenged. From Human Rights Watch’s April 28 letter to Speaker Pinto [citations removed], which notes that the bill has alrea…
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