Religion Dispatches
…San Jose, Dallas and Denver are doing less tracting-going door to door in search of people to teach-and more service. The change began three years ago, when “San Jose leaders proposed that missionaries provide two hours of nonproselytizing community service every day, five days a week—up from the normal four or so hours a week. Missionaries are expected to find their own service opportunities. A website called Justserve, listing organ…
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…race or religion, had known mental health issues. Likewise, a substantial number of the men on the Brady Campaign list were not previously identified as having psychological problems, but were “driven” to violent rage by financial and relationship crises. So we cannot name any specific cluster of circumstances that prompts such behavior, though we do know that ready access to firearms is a factor. All of which is to say, yes, the intimate enemy,…
Read More…atching up on. His Huffington Post article, “The Westboro Baptist Church’s Search for the Jew ‘Elect,’” delves into their reinterpretation of Christian Zionism: According to Westboro members, all the Jews who remain in America and most of the Jews who live in Israel during the end times will be killed. “Because they broke the covenant, and walk in the ways of their fathers in disobedience, and because they killed their Messiah, they have got a fin…
Read More…ed that there is literally no depth to which he is not prepared to sink in search of a few votes. This isn’t even scraping the barrel; it’s crawling around in the muck beneath the barrel. But setting all of that aside for the moment, “The One” raises some serious questions about the state of our political discourse. Bible readers with some background in scriptural interpretation will remember that John’s Revelation was written as a kind of code to…
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…he Cylons came to be is the emphasis on morals, ethics, ethnicity, and the search for meaning. Caprica, a society of privilege and wealth, obviously has problems. Rich white kids from Caprica like Zoe hate their accomplished selfish parents, while nice ethnic middle-class families from Tauron have obedient children trying to assimilate into the broader culture. Stereotypes blow into oblivion however, when a terrorist bombing by Zoe’s handsome youn…
Read More…, people worship at the Church of Disney, no one has been able to seize or search anything from Xe, né Blackwater, or the banks. I think we should grant corporations all the rights of persons. In exchange, they carry all the responsibilities of persons. They get the same tax breaks we do. We can try them for murder; one thinks of Xe or KBR. The question of corporate marriages becomes more difficult. Must they be married by corporate priests, or ca…
Read More…they are,” Bell continued. This declaration is the latest step in Bell’s “search for a more forgiving faith,” a process Kelefa Sanneh detailed in The New Yorker last November. Bell first truly rocked the conservative Christian world in 2011 by questioning the existence of hell in his book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. Six months after its publication, he resigned from Mars Hill. Although the re…
Read More…at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and attempted to locate Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 using a magical ritual that combined Islamic elements with shamanic practices. On Thursday Ibrahim Mat Zin, also known as Rajah Bomoh Sedunia Nujum, delivered a press conference (in which he demonstrated a squint that bore an uncanny resemblance to Pat Robertson.) He initially stated that he had been invited to perform his ritual by one of Malaysia’s “…
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…lation about the pop superstar’s supposed Illuminati connections. A Google search for “Lady Gaga + Illuminati” turns up over 220,000 results, and YouTube has a host of videos detailing the occult imagery pervading Lady Gaga’s body of work. One main source for theories concerning the prevalence of occult symbols in Lady Gaga’s oeuvre is the intriguing (and highly speculative) set of analyses penned by the anonymous author of The Vigilant Citizen, a…
Read More…not spiritual or religious – many of them are according to Pew’s latest research poll. Instead, they simply see evangelicals for what they are: “…many people who left a religion to become unaffiliated say they did so in part because they think of religious people as hypocritical or judgmental, because religious organizations focus too much on rules or because religious leaders are too focused on power and money.” Rev. Campolo is not finished, how…
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