Religion Dispatches
…ween conflicting religious attitudes, and the freedom at stake is not only freedom of expression but freedom of religion. For while Luther was surely engaging in offensive speech, he was also exercising a right of freedom of conscience, which included the right to dissent from Catholic orthodoxy. Debased though Luther’s rhetoric may have been, there was no way to be a reformer without offending the hegemon. It’s a story as old as religion. Orthodo…
Read More…vision on Americans who believe that they should not have their religious freedom taken away. This is the same Mitt Romney who could barely utter a word about religious freedom for his own faith when it was under assault by some of his fellow conservatives. Now that he’s expected to be his party’s nominee, he feels compelled to take up its most potent religion crusade this year: the claim that religious institutions who are opposed to contracepti…
Read More
…” Chief among the lessons of the book were Balizet’s claims, based in Pentecostal Word-Faith theology, that all physical ills have spiritual origins. She taught that difficult and painful labors were potentially due to disagreements between the parents over child discipline, while perfect childbirths were the result of proper spiritual preparation. She reportedly has walked out on women in labor on receipt of a prophetic message from God that Sata…
Read More
…agenda; with only a few dissenting voices pointing out that any assault on free speech, even the free speech of an anonymous cabal, threatens the rights of all. The vandalism of the Guidestones seems to be a classic case of an eccentric and lofty idea under assault by the hoi polloi. In fact, a letter from the monument’s benefactors printed by the Elberton Granite Finishing Company predicted just such a scenario. They ask that the people of Elbert…
Read More…“Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing.” I am with Milton here: The freer the press, the less the innocent have to fear and the more the guilty need to be worried. We’d like to think so. But the rub, as Miller argues, is that all too often the light merely shines on crafty rhetoric. Read Miller’s piece here. *Ingrid Schlueter resigned, sh…
Read More
…“license to discriminate” executive order that circulated in February remains unknown, leaving advocates understandably wary about how the president whose supporters boasted that he is the most pro-LGBT Republican in history will curtail the already tenuous rights and freedoms gained by LGBT Americans in the past decade. “When you have a president who fundamentally does not care about public policy, and can be so easily swayed by the people who su…
Read More
…h or equality of outcome is not a popular political position. There are no free rides, and that entails that some—perhaps most—are going to lose. It’s really the same logic that my students advocated for against the tendency towards universalism in Origen of Alexandria and Gregory of Nyssa. I would suggest the reason they had so much trouble with the prospect of universal salvation had more to do with cultural assumptions rather than religious one…
Read More
…im to be baffled: “Why do Tibetans feel this way? Have we not modernized Tibet? Tibetans now have electricity, roads and medical care. Aren’t Tibetans more prosperous than they were fifty years ago?” Despite these material advances—which in fact are confined almost exclusively to urban areas—most Tibetans feel as though they are second-class citizens within the PRC, lacking the same rights, privileges, and economic opportunities that the Han Chine…
Read More
…nd bloodshed of Donald John Trump’s time in office, just as there’s a line between between political correctness and cancel culture; between scoffing at the liberal media and QAnon; and between generalized white male rage at the loss of entitlement and white nationalism. If his victims want to take the opportunity of his death to vent, well, who can blame them? (The Gateway Pundit, for one.) More to the point, who can silence them? If anyone dared…
Read More…ectoral outcomes. I wish I knew the answer. I imagine no one outside McCain’s inner circle knows the answer. But in a nation where religion and politics are inextricably intertwined, for better or for worse, more people should at least have asked the question….
Read More