Religion Dispatches
…look busy.” We’re so concerned to look busy—to look like we’re about God’s business in the world, that we forget what it means to truly be about God’s business in the world. Jesus isn’t some micro-managing boss who demands that we look busy or we’ll be in trouble. What God demands is that we do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God. What God demands is that we love our neighbor just as much as we love ourselves and that we love God with all…
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…om his treatment of employees. He replied, “I like to keep my faith out of business decisions.” Keeping faith out of business is the logical extension of separating concern for workers from theological conversations. Separating matters of faith and conversations about God into private realms, or squeezing them into an hour per week of worship, diminishes the value, scope and reach of faith. This closet view of religion and faith has persuaded too…
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…s visible and therefore functional. An illicit affair, a divorce (or two), business fraud, a racist remark, denigrating the sacrifices of fallen soldiers, insensitively mocking a disabled person—any significant misstep may be enough to break the magical, often fragile social spell that binds the person to the symbol. Authoritarian rulers such as Trump, however, perform a sleight of hand that simultaneously hides the distinction between candidate a…
Read More…actions, contends the FFRF, “show that they neither behaved nor conducted business as if they sincerely believed that the world would end on May 21” and constitute “willful deception.” Carving out a space between fraud and protected religious claims, the FFRF makes an important distinction: Camping did not commit deceit and fraud in being wrong about the date of the Rapture; the question to be determined is whether he may have committed deceit or…
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…r is not immediately obvious, which is why the religious roots of a unique American madness remain more obscure than they should. Why this matters, one more time, is that extreme individualism and exclusion of the Other are not the natural way of human being. It is a peculiarly white European expression of pathology, a pathology reaching its maximum strength via our warped version of Calvinism. Among the people coming for the first time to think o…
Read More…ssed SB 1062, a bill that would, if it became law, enshrine the ability of business owners to refuse service to customers based on their sexual orientation. The bill’s sponsors, as I wrote a few weeks ago, fear that the “religious freedom” of business owners is threatened by LGBT people asking them to bake a cake or snap some photographs. Here’s E.J. Montini, a columnist with the Arizona Republic, who says that “extremists in the legislature [are]…
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…ng story co-authored by managing editor Ted Olsen and a blogger and former businessman named Ken Smith. As Olsen tells it, his interest in David Jang dates back several years. He describes a time, over four years ago, when Christianity Today was in talks with the Christian Post about working together in some capacity. Then, Olsen says, one of CT’s partners in the Global Christian Alliance cautioned CT about partnering with the Christian Post becau…
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…ally didn’t believe in the whole effort but it sure was good for political business.” To seal the deal, Brody has some breaking news: Trump is for a 20-week abortion ban. He’s for defunding Planned Parenthood. Sure, he used to be pro-choice, but he changed his mind on that in 2011—when he was running for president. What was that Brody wrote about that “homosexual” Mehlman? That he “really didn’t believe in the whole effort but it sure was good for…
Read More…randeis University historian and chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History Jonathan Sarna offers the best response to this ridiculous hypothetical and puts his finger on exactly how it distorts the interplay between the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause: The analogy to “forcing kosher delis to sell ham,” put forward by Bishop William Lori, exemplifies the way the problem is misunderstood. In America (unlike…
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…ence in mind when writing? I wrote Spirit in the Dark both for scholars of American religion and for scholars of African American literature, as these are two of the academic fields in which I was trained. However, given the broader interest in black writers and literary movements (i.e. the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts movement), as well as in African American religion, I hope that the book finds a general academic audience (and perhaps even…
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